Lookahead-Aware Active Noise Cancellation for True Wireless Stereo Earbuds
Overview of Technology
A noise cancellation method aiming to improve the noise reduction abilities of true wireless stereo earbuds
Noise cancellation allows people to listen to audio content without raising the volume excessively and is helpful in environments with excessive noise.
Prolonged exposure to a noisy environment can have a significantly negative impact on our health. Strong noise is the major cause of deafness and hearing impairment, as well as affecting mental health and work efficiency. True Wireless Stereo earbuds with active noise cancellation are the most effective way of minimizing these noises. Although these earbuds do cancel noise, its performance is restricted for many reasons including an inability to create a perfect anti‑noise signal, signal processor limitations, minimal battery capacity and limited time and distance of signal output.
The lookahead‑aware active noise cancellation technology is an active noise cancellation (LA‑ANC) technology that enhances noise reduction on true wireless stereo earbuds. This device is more effective in cancelling higher frequency noises through its form factor and the piezo microphone design. It also allows closer proximity to the eardrum.
The Lookahead-aware active noise cancellation for true wireless stereo earbuds aims to further increase efficiency in noise cancellation, with a focus on enhancing the high frequency noise capabilities in comparison to existing models which do not efficiently achieve this.
The LA‑ANC method integrates a piezo microphone, signal processor and a wireless module into the charging case of true wireless stereo earbuds. The look‑ahead stereo is useful for real‑time noise reduction
This device demonstrated the advantages of LA-ANC over the popular ANC method adopted by Apple, Bose, and Sony. According to the test results, LA-ANC achieved higher noise attenuation in the 4kHz range compared with Bose Quiet Comfort Earbuds (QCE) and Bose Quiet Comfort 20 (QC20). Even without passive noise reduction, the performance of LA-ANC is still comparable to QCE and Q20 for high-frequency sounds.
The LA‑ANC system can be easily applied to various practical situations since it does not depend on being close to the charging case to operate.
The piezo microphone in LA‑ANC can easily get lookahead signal to eliminate high frequency, unpredictable and dynamic range noise in real time. LA‑ANC technique is expected to significantly improve the noise cancellation performance of existing ANC product on eliminating high frequency sound.
Mississippi State University are looking to license this technology to the tech companies such as Bose, Apple and Sony who could use this technology to improve their current forms of ANC earbuds for improved noise cancellation.