MULTIMICROPHONE MONAURAL AIDS FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED

这项研究的最终目标是开发感官辅助工具， 在空间中的多个点处对声学环境进行采样 （多麦克风辅助设备），以提高听力受损受试者的能力 在复杂的环境中更有效地发挥作用， 干扰和混响。 更直接的目标是探索 多麦克风系统用于单声道收听的潜力 环境. 这项研究的结果，结合研究， 双耳互动在受损的听众，将提供坚实的背景 开发多麦克风辅助设备，以帮助受损的听众 他们的一只或两只耳朵听力都很好。 这项拟议中的研究，大量借鉴了以前的工作， 自然和人工空间多样化传感器系统（双耳 听觉和天线/信号处理理论），主要关注 减少干扰和对空间分辨信息进行编码。 考虑用于减少干扰的技术包括线性和 非线性处理以及固定和自适应处理。 研究 空间编码，这是出于需要监测一般 声学环境以及专注于一个特定的来源，是 关注的是空间分辨的信号 物理上可以被处理用于单声道收听， 在感知层面上被保留下来。 减少干扰的结果应适用于 耳蜗植入辅助器和感觉替代辅助器以及传统的 音响辅助设备

The ultimate goal of this research is the development of sensory aids which sample the acoustic environment at more than one point in space (multimicrophone aids) to improve the ability of hearing-impaired subjects to function more effectively in complex environments containing interference and reverberation. The more immediate goal is to explore the potential of multimicrophone systems for monaural listening in such environments. The results of this research, combined with research on binaural interaction in impaired listeners, will provide solid background for the development of multimicrophone aids to assist impaired listeners who have significant hearing in either one or two ears. The proposed research, which draws heavily from previous work on both natural and artificial spatially diversified sensor systems (binaural hearing and antenna/signal-processing theory), is concerned primarily with reduction of interference and coding of spatially resolved information. The techniques considered for reducing interference include both linear and nonlinear processing, and both fixed and adaptive processing. The study of spatial coding, which is motivated by the need to monitor the general acoustic enviornment as well as to focus upon a particular source, is concerned with the extent to which signals that are spatially resolved physically can be processed for monaural listening so that the resolution is preserved at the perceptual level. Results on the reduction of interference should be applicable to cochlear-implant aids and sensory substitution aids as well as conventional acoustic aids.