Research Project
9305049
Project Summary / Abstract Hearing in noise is one of the major problems reported by hearing-impaired individuals wearing hearing aids when trying to participate in conversations with background noise. In a typical restaurant or similar noisy situation, background noise significantly reduces the intelligibility of speech for hearing-impaired listeners. The objective of this project is to build a compact, battery-powered wireless device to demonstrate mh acoustics' higher-order, superdirectional steerable circular microphone array beamforming technology for hearing-impaired listeners. mh acoustics' patented beamforming technology is unique in that it provides much higher directional gain than that provided by currently available devices, an advantage that can greatly improve a hearing-impaired listener's ability to hear and communicate in high background-noise conditions. The overall size of the array and associated processing hardware can be made small enough to result in a complete battery- powered wireless device that fits in a shirt pocket. By utilizing a wireless audio streaming connection to existing hearing aids, the device allows a hearing-impaired person to place the microphone closer to a desired source or sources. The combination of better placement of the external microphone device along with the significantly higher amount of linear signal-to-noise improvement provided by the beamformer, will significantly increase the intelligibility for listeners in high background-noise environments. Our device has the ability to manually or automatically steer the highly directional beam (or beams) to a desired speech source (or sources), something that is not currently available in commercial technologies. Furthermore, currently available technologies do not provide nearly as much directional gain. Using mh acoustics' novel array hardware and beamformer- design methodology, our device can better handle issues experienced with traditional directional hearing devices, such as loss of output level, increased internal noise, wind-noise sensitivity, and the absence of synchronous binaural processing. mh acoustics, founded in 2002 by researchers from Bell Laboratories, is currently successfully commercializing beamforming technologies for public safety radio products as well as products in the mobile headset and handset markets. mh acoustics' higher-order superdirectional beamforming technologies achieve linear, distortionless, acoustic background-noise reduction capability that is unequaled in the industry and that can significantly improve the ability of hearing-impaired listeners to communicate in high background-noise conditions. In this project, we will work closely with Professor Ruth Bentler, Chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, to address audiological issues related to utilizing our superdirectional circular microphone array technology in conjunction with hearing-aids in both clinical and normal field-use conditions.
