Binaural dereverberation based on a dual-channel Wiener filter with optimized noise field coherence

In this paper a novel speech enhancement algorithm for binaural dereverberation is proposed. It is based on a multichannel Wiener filter approach, which is optimized for the application to digital hearing aids and binaural telephony headsets. This is mainly done by two different modifications. First, an optimized model for the binaural coherence which takes the shadowing effects of the head into account. Second, a binaural input-output structure which does not affect the most important binaural cues, i.e., interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD), and hence, keeps the localization ability. Evaluations with measured binaural room impulse responses (BRIR) show that this approach is capable of reducing reverberation especially in highly reverberant environments.