STTR Phase I: Wireless Communication Integrated Active Noise Reduction System

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是减少高噪音水平对婴儿造成健康损害和残疾的风险。建议的WCIANR系统可以通过减少NICU婴儿的听力障碍、认知障碍、学习障碍和急性生命体征变化来显著降低教育和公共卫生成本。例如，每个儿童的终身教育成本和终身听力损失成本估计为115,600美元至175,000美元。平均每年的总成本约为21亿美元。此外，父母之间的关系在孩子的生活中至关重要，因为这种第一种关系决定了孩子的生理和情感模板。为所有未来的关系做准备。建议的WCIANR系统可以为NICU婴儿和他们的父母提供这些重要的联系机会，并改善婴儿？语言发展。与NICU婴儿交流还可以帮助新妈妈预防产后抑郁症，改善亲和力。除了婴儿保育箱，建议的ANR系统还适用于任何需要听力保护以防止听力损伤和听力损失的商业行业，如汽车行业、机械制造行业、医疗设备行业、矿山行业和航空行业。这项小型企业技术转移研究(STTR)第一阶段项目旨在论证用于新生儿重症监护病房(NICU)环境的无线通信集成有源降噪(WCIANR)系统的可行性，将改进的有源降噪(ANR)能力与无线未衰减语音传递功能相结合，允许与婴儿进行通信。由于NICU中复杂的噪声模型，传统的ANR系统不能在不进行修改的情况下直接应用于孵化器。NICU环境在孵化器内外都有多个意外噪声源。提出的系统将结合前馈和反馈ANR系统来产生更大的静默区，提供更深的噪声衰减，并在复杂的噪声环境中运行。建议的ANR系统将使婴儿S头部的噪声水平降低20-25dB。除了减少到达婴儿的不需要的噪音外，WCIANR系统还将促进婴儿与其父母和照顾者之间的双向无线通信。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be to reduce the risk of health impairments and disabilities for infants caused by high noise levels. The proposed WCIANR system can dramatically reduce the educational and public health cost by reducing hearing impairment, cognitive disorders, learning disabilities, and acute vital sign variability of NICU infants. For example, the lifetime educational cost and the lifetime cost of hearing loss have been estimated at $115,600 to $175,000 per child. The average total cost is around $2.1 billion per year. In addition, parental bonding is critical in a child's life because this first relationship determines the biological and emotional ?template? for all future relationships. The proposed WCIANR system can provide these vital bonding opportunities for NICU infants and their parents and improve infants? language development. Communicating with NICU babies can also benefit the new mothers in preventing postpartum depression and improving bonding. In addition to infant incubators, the proposed ANR system is applicable to any commercial industry where hearing protection is necessity to prevent people from hearing injury and loss, such as automotive industry, mechanical fabricating industry, medical equipment industry, mine industry and aviation industry.This Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) Phase I project seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of a wireless communication integrated active noise reduction (WCIANR) system for the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) environment, combining an improved active noise reduction (ANR) capability with a wireless unattenuated voice pass through function to permit communication with an infant. Traditional ANR systems cannot be applied directly to incubators without modification due to complicated noise models in the NICU. The NICU environment has multiple unexpected noise sources both inside and outside the incubators. The proposed system would combine feed-forward and feedback ANR systems to generate a larger zone of silence, offer deeper noise attenuation, and operate in complex noise environments. The proposed ANR system should reduce the level of the noise at the infant?s head by 20-25dB. In addition to reducing the unwanted noise reaching the infant, the WCIANR system will facilitate the two-way wireless communication between the infant and his or her parents and caregivers.