Active Noise Control in Headsets by Using a Low-Cost Microcontroller

Conventional passive headsets often perform well in reducing high-frequency noise but perform badly to cancel the low-frequency noise. Accordingly, academic researches and companies have developed active noise-reducing headsets to cancel annoying noise at such lower frequencies using expensive digital signal processors (DSPs). This paper develops a modified feedback active noise control (ANC) algorithm to design an active noise-reducing headset with a low-cost microcontroller unit (MCU), offering a cheaper solution to noise reduction than existing audio headsets. The ways to save the computing load of a least mean square (LMS) algorithm by a microcontroller and to compensate for the output limit of speakers in a headset are also provided. Experimental results show that the proposed approach removes disturbing noise very well and outperforms the commercial headset.