Acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) is digital signal processing that removes the far-end audio a room's loudspeakers play back into its microphones, so remote participants do not hear their own voices returned to them with a delay.
In a conference room, remote voices come out of the loudspeakers, bounce around the room and are picked up again by the microphones. Without AEC that sound is sent back to the far end, which hears itself a fraction of a second later. AEC compares what was sent to the loudspeakers with what the microphones capture and subtracts the echo.
AEC runs inside a DSP, a video bar or a conferencing device. It performs best when the room is not excessively reverberant and each microphone channel has its own AEC reference — one reason ceiling-array rooms are commissioned with a dedicated DSP rather than relying on a single tabletop device.
Related terms
Sources
- AEC in Tesira — Biamp
Defined by Gerson Carrillo, Director of Professional Services, D.I.S.T. · Last reviewed · Editorial policy