New Automotive Echo Cancellation Noise Reduction Solution from NXP Makes Calls Clear

NXP Semiconductors has announced a new echo cancellation noise reduction solution (ECNR) that significantly reduces the problem of noisy voice communications and provides carmakers with a consumer pleasing, hands-free calling experience. The cost-effective solution combines innovative ECNR software that can be easily ported onto NXP i.MX processors and NXP’s car radio tuners and DSPs. The new NXP ECNR solution is also ITU-T P1110 and CarPlay pre-certified.
 
Echo and noise can make communication on the road difficult. Echo occurs when the speakers within a car transmit a voice signal from an incoming call, which subsequently ricochets through the vehicle and returns to the microphone. This causes the caller to hear their own voice, which is distracting and can result in broken communications. Additionally, road noise from fans, exhaust, tires, windows and passengers can infiltrate calls and render them unintelligible, ultimately disrupting the driving experience and causing frustration.

The new NXP ECNR solution deals with both problems by removing echoes and filtering out unwanted noise from the cockpit to enhance the sound quality of conversations. Since the ECNR solution can be ported to NXP chipsets and is ITU-T P1110 and CarPlay pre-certified, it can reduce carmakers’ R&D expenses and speed up the design cycle.

“The NXP ECNR software has been deployed worldwide in more than a billion phones 2 and we want to deliver this leading market-proven technology to our automotive customers,” says Alexandre Henon, marketing director of audio solutions at NXP. “We adapted our ECNR to automotive requirements and ported the software on two NXP chipset families to provide NXP customers with an easy to implement, high-performance and architecturally flexible solution depending on where they want to run the ECNR function.”

NXPs SAF775x family radio-audio one chip is a market-proven solution and has been successfully designed in major automotive OEM platforms. SAF775x integrates up to 2 AM/FM tuners, radio processing, an automotive audio hub and an open HiFi2 core for advanced audio algorithms. SAF775x has rich analog and digital interfaces, flexible audio mixer and filter structure, and core audio processing algorithms. 
 
i.MX applications processors offer a feature and performance-scalable multicore platform that includes single, dual and quad-core families based on the Arm v7-A and Arm v8 architecture based solutions with powerful processing for neural networks, advanced graphics, machine vision, video, audio, voice and safety-critical requirements.  

The ECNR algorithm is running on the HiFi2 core of SAF775x, ready be activated by a key code.
www.nxp.com/imx