NONLINEAR PROCESSOR FOR ACOUSTIC ECHO CANCELLER WITH BACKGROUND NOISE PRESERVATION AND LONG ECHO TAIL SUPPRESSION

A nonlinear processor (NLP) for selectively removing or reducing residual echo signals from an acoustic echo canceller associated with a telephony terminal is provided. Low level background noise and near end speech signals pass through the NLP structure substantially unaltered. Distortion, background noise above a preset threshold and echo signals including long duration echoes are replaced with a linear combination of previous noise data.