Compact super-directional microphone array to improve hearing in background noise

 描述(申请人提供)：在噪声中听力是佩戴助听器的听力受损人士在试图参与与背景噪声对话时报告的主要问题之一。在典型的餐厅或类似的嘈杂情况下，背景噪声会显著降低听障人士的语音清晰度。本项目的目标是构建一种紧凑的电池供电设备，以演示MH声学公司为听障人士提供的高阶、超定向可控圆形麦克风阵列波束形成技术。MH声学公司正在申请专利的波束成形技术是独一无二的，因为它提供的定向增益比目前可用的设备高得多，因此可以极大地提高听力受损的听众在高背景噪声条件下倾听和交流的能力。阵列和相关处理硬件的总尺寸可以制作得足够小，以产生一个完整的电池供电的设备，可以放在衬衫口袋里。此外，通过利用现有助听器的无线音频流连接(蓝牙BL标准)，该设备还允许听力受损的人将麦克风放置在离所需来源更近的地方。外部麦克风设备的更好放置与波束形成器提供的大量线性信噪比改善相结合，将显著提高高背景噪声环境中听众的清晰度。我们的设备将具有手动或自动将高度定向的波束(或多个波束)转向所需的语音源(或多个声源)的能力，这是目前尚不存在的商业技术。此外，目前可用的技术提供的方向性增益几乎没有那么多。利用MH声学公司新颖的阵列硬件和波束赋形器设计方法，我们可以更好地处理传统定向听力设备遇到的问题，如输出电平损失、内部噪声增加、风噪声敏感性以及缺乏同步双耳处理。MH声学公司由贝尔实验室的研究人员创立，目前正在成功地将用于公共安全无线电产品以及移动耳机和手机市场的波束成形技术商业化。MH声学的高阶超定向波束形成技术实现了业界无与伦比的线性、无失真的声学背景降噪能力，因此可以显著提高听力受损听众在高背景噪声条件下的通信能力。在这个项目中，我们还将与爱荷华大学传播科学和疾病学系主任Ruth Bentler教授密切合作，在最初的软件定义和设计过程中解决与定向助听器相关的听力问题。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): 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 device to demonstrate mh acoustics' higher-order, super-directional steerable circular microphone array beamforming technology for hearing-impaired listeners. mh acoustics' patent- pending beamforming technology is unique in that it provides much higher directional gain than currently available devices and can therefore 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 device that fits in a shirt pocket. Also, by utilizing a wireless audio streaming connection (Bluetooth BL standard) to existing hearing aids, the device allows a hearing-impaired person to also place the microphone closer to the desired source. The combination of better placement of the external microphone device along with the large 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 will have 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 commercial technologies. Furthermore, currently available technologies do not provide nearly as much directional gain. With mh acoustics' novel array hardware and beamfomer-design methodology, we can better handle issues experienced with traditional directional hearing devices such as loss of output level, increased internal noise, wind-noise sensitivity, and absence of synchronous binaural processing. mh acoustics, founded 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 super-directional beamforming technologies achieve linear, distortionless, acoustic background-noise reduction capability unequaled in the industry and can therefore significantly improve the ability of hearing-impaired listeners to communicate in high background-noise conditions. In this project, we will also work closely with Professor Ruth Bentler, Chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Iowa, to address audiological issues related to directional hearing-aids during the initial software definition and design process.