A QRD-RLS based frequency domain multichannel wiener filter algorithm for noise reduction in hearing aids

In this paper a frequency domain multichannel Wiener filter algorithm is proposed for noise reduction in hearing aids. It is shown that a robust and efficient QR Decomposition Recursive Least Squares (QRD-RLS) based updating scheme can be derived, if a single target speech source is assumed. Moreover, the scheme also allows to include a trade-off between speech distortion and noise reduction, as with the Speech Distortion Weighted Multichannel Wiener Filter (SDW-MWF). The QRD-RLS based algorithm is compared with an adaptive SDW-MWF algorithm, for a binaural hearing aid setup with 4 microphones. Besides the fact that the QRD-RLS based algorithm achieves a further improvement in speech intelligibility weighted SNR, the computational efficiency and numerical robustness are also increased.