A Dual Filtering Scheme for Nonlinear Active Noise Control

Active noise control problems are often affected by nonlinear effects such as distortion and saturation of measurement and actuation devices, which call for suitable nonlinear models and algorithms. The active noise control problem can be interpreted as an indirect model identification problem, due to the secondary path dynamics that follow the control filter block. This complicates the weight update mechanism in the nonlinear case, in that the error gradient depends on the secondary path gradient through nonlinear recursions. A simpler and computationally less demanding approach is here proposed that employs the updating scheme of the standard filtered-x least mean squares (LMS) or filtered-u LMS algorithm. As in those schemes, the calculation of the error gradient requires a signal filtering through an auxiliary system, here obtained through a secondary adaptation loop. The resulting dual filtering LMS algorithm performs the adaptation of the controller parameters in a direct identification mode and can therefore be easily coupled with adaptive model structure selection schemes to provide online tuning of the model structure, for improved model robustness.