To better integrate disabled persons is a continuous aim in a modern society. For handicapped people, robots are used to support the personal freedom and provide more convenience. These robots need to be controlled by voice which requires a reliable working speech recognition system. Therefore, algorithms that can improve the quality of speech and thus support the detection of the speech information are highly desirable. This paper introduces a hardware implemented and optimised Adaptive Noise Canceller (ANC), which can be utilised in speech detection devices to reduce the noise intensity of the speech to be recognised. In addition, it can also be used to improve the speech quality in information transfer systems. The evaluation results show how the circuit is able to reduce the unwanted components within a speech signal and therefore, the system is able to increase the speech quality. Furthermore, any prior knowledge of the surrounding environmental properties is not needed.

Index Terms. Noise Cancelling, LMS, VLSI