Electronic – Hybrid phone echo cancellation circuit

telephone

I'm using a single board computer to talk on a phone line through two coils, one for the TX part, the other for the RX. The phone line is on another coil and then it's connected to a two-wire circuit that leads to an handset.
As you know, the problem with this config is that if you build a full-duplex communication system with VoIP in the middle, you hear the echo from what you just transmitted on the network coming back See this connection scheme

Is there a circuit which is able to reduce or eliminate such echo? Right now I'm using a DSP to implement a simple subtractor (Rx=Rx-Tx), but maybe this common problem has been solved by clever analogue engineers back in the past.

Connection scheme with echo path in red

Best Answer

The analogue circuit is known as a "two-wire hybrid" and does exactly what you are doing with your DSP. Strictly speaking this is just sidetone elimination rather than echo cancellation which Kellenjb's link addresses. Below is a simple example (which is a discrete replacement for an obsolete Mitel part). This arrangement only works if the load impedance is precisely controlled - in this case 754\$\Omega\$.

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