2022/07/12 by Hanqing Guo, Guo, Hanqing, Chenning Li +9
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advanced Adaptive Filtering Techniques #Audio and Speech Processing (eess.AS) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Sound (cs.SD) #Speech Recognition and Synthesis #Speech and Audio Processing #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2207.05848
openalex publication_date 2022/07/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this paper, we propose NEC (Neural Enhanced Cancellation), a defense mechanism, which prevents unauthorized microphones from capturing a target speaker's voice. Compared with the existing scrambling-based audio cancellation approaches, NEC can selectively remove a target speaker's voice from a mixed speech without causing interference to others. Specifically, for a target speaker, we design a Deep Neural Network (DNN) model to extract high-level speaker-specific but utterance-independent vocal features from his/her reference audios. When the microphone is recording, the DNN generates a shadow sound to cancel the target voice in real-time. Moreover, we modulate the audible shadow sound onto an ultrasound frequency, making it inaudible for humans. By leveraging the non-linearity of the microphone circuit, the microphone can accurately decode the shadow sound for target voice cancellation. We implement and evaluate NEC comprehensively with 8 smartphone microphones in different settings. The results show that NEC effectively mutes the target speaker at a microphone without interfering with other users' normal conversations.