Coherence Function and Adaptive Noise Cancellation Performance of an Acoustic Sensor System for Use in Detecting...

Adaptive noise cancellation is a useful linear technique to attenuate unwanted background noise that cannot be removed using traditional frequency-selective filters. Usually, this is due to the signal and noise co-existing in the same frequency band. This paper tests a weighted least mean squares (WLMS) algorithm on a stethoscope system for use in detecting coronary artery disease in the presence of background noise. Each stethoscope is equipped with two microphones: one used to detect heart signals and one used to detect background noise. The WLMS method was used for four different sources of background noise whilst measuring a heartbeat, including a single tone, multiple tones, hospital/clinic noise, and breathing noise. The magnitude-squared coherence between both microphones was unity for the tone scenarios, resulting in complete attenuation. For the other background noise sources, a less-than-unity magnitude-squared coherence resulted in minor and no attenuation. Thus, the coherence function is a tool that can be used to predict the amount of attenuation achievable by linear adaptive noise-cancellation techniques, such as WLMS, as presented in this article.