Research on the development of a portable digital hearing aid

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The purpose of this research is to develop a portable digital hearing aid system which realize the method proposed by us, and to evaluate the system. In this method, the spectrum of the input signal is transferred into the remaining audible range of the sensorineural hearing impaired listeners by compensating luck of loudness in each narrow band, and is expected to improve the intelligibility of the impaired listeners greatly.1. Development of the algorithm and software which realize the above method in a portable hearing aid : A low-powered DSP chip, Motorola DSP-56156 was selected as a CPU in the system. The software for DSP-56156 was developed, which realize the above method in real time.2. Development of the portable digital hearing aid : The system was designed by us and was developed by Ono Sokki Co., Ltd. The system measures 23x87x138 mm and can be used for four consecutive hours without changing its batteries. This result meets the original specification and is considered to have sufficient performance.3. Evaluation of the portable system : The experiment was carried out at the Dept.Otolaryngology, Tohoku University School of Medicine. Though the number of the subjects is small so far, some promising results has been obtained. For using this system in everyday life, a system to fit the parameters of the hearing aid to each individual listener must be further developed. Thus the research should be continued.