Automatic Stabilization of an Adaptive Feedback Control for Noise Cancelling In-Ear Headphones

Headphones with an integrated active noise cancellation system have been increasingly introduced to the consumer market in recent years. When exposing the human ear to active noise sources in this striking distance, the ensuring of a safe sound pressure level is vital. In feedback systems, this is coupled with the stability of the closed loop. Stable controller design is thus essential. However, changes in the control path during run-time can cause the stable control system to become unstable, resulting in an overdrive of the speakers in the headphones. This paper proposes a method, which enables the real-time analysis of the current system state and if necessary stabilizes the closed loop while maintaining the active noise reduction. This is achieved by estimating and evaluating the open loop behavior with an adaptive filter and subsequently limiting the controller gain in respect to the stability margin.