NOISE REDUCTION FOR HEARING AIDS

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The overall goal of the proposed research is to improve speech intelligibility in noise for the hearing-impaired. The specific aims are to develop and evaluate and adaptive microphone array. The array will be the size of a pencil, and could be hand-held or worn on the side of a pair of eyeglasses. The microphone array will greatly improve the ability of hearing impaired listeners to communicate effectively under conditions of noise and reverberation that now cause severe difficultly, including meeting rooms, lecture halls, restaurants, churches, or in large groups of people. The research involves the development and testing of the adaptive array. The array geometry and signal processing will first be stimulated on a computer. The array will then be built and tested under realistic conditions of noise in a reverberant room. Physical testings will be based on measuring the improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the array in comparison with an existing hearing-aid design. Ineligibility testing will be based on determining speech recognition as a function of SNR for different conditions of array usage and room reverberation, again in comparison with existing hearing-aid technology. The ability of the adaptive array to reject noise in a reverberant room will thus be determined and directly related to the improvements obtained in speech intelligibility.