A high performance microphone array system for hearing aid applications

Author

Wang, A. ; Yao, K. ; Hudson, R.E. ; Korompis, D. ; Lorenzelli, F. ; Soli, S.F. ; Gao, S.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., California Univ., Los Angeles, CA, USA

Volume

6

fYear

1996

fDate

7-10 May 1996

Firstpage

3197

Abstract

Microphone array technology has been proposed for various audio, teleconference, and hearing aid applications. By forming a focused beam toward the desired speech source, attenuating background noises and rejecting discrete spatial interferers, a microphone array can enhance the SNR/SIR in a noisy environment with significant improvement in speech intelligibility. An array can also perform real time source-localization or direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation in various applications. We present a high performance prototype PC-based microphone array system for hearing aid applications. Algorithms for maximum energy criterion array weight design needed in the speech processing mode as well as modified broadband near-field MUSIC schemes in the search mode are discussed. Then a PC-based microphone array system using a TMS320C40 DSP is described. Preliminary study of equalizing non-uniform response microphones is also discussed. Finally, some array performance results in free-space and reverberant room conditions are presented

Keywords

acoustic transducer arrays; digital signal processing chips; hearing aids; medical computing; microcomputer applications; microphones; parameter estimation; speech enhancement; speech intelligibility; DOA estimation; PC based microphone array system; SNR/SIR; TMS320C40 DSP; array performance results; array weight design algorithms; background noise attenuation; direction of arrival estimation; discrete spatial interferer rejection; free-space conditions; hearing aid applications; high performance microphone array system; maximum energy criterion; microphone array technology; modified broadband near-field MUSIC; noisy environment; nonuniform response microphone equalisation; real time source-localization; reverberant room conditions; search mode; speech intelligibility; speech processing; speech source; Algorithm design and analysis; Auditory system; Background noise; Direction of arrival estimation; Microphone arrays; Prototypes; Speech enhancement; Speech processing; Teleconferencing; Working environment noise;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1996. ICASSP-96. Conference Proceedings., 1996 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Atlanta, GA

ISSN

1520-6149

Print_ISBN

0-7803-3192-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICASSP.1996.550556

Filename

550556