Independent Component Analysis is a computational method for separating a multivariate signal into additive subcomponents supposing the mutual statistical independence of the non-Gaussian source signals.
It is a special case of blind source separation. When the independence assumption is correct, blind ICA separation of a mixed signal gives very good results. It is also used for signals that are not supposed to be generated by a mixing for analysis purposes. A simple application of ICA is the "cocktail party problem", where the underlying speech signals are separated from a sample data consisting of people talking simultaneously in a room. Usually the problem is simplified by assuming no time delays or echoes.
Source: Wikipedia – Independent component analysis
