Using linearly-constrained adaptive beamforming to reduce interference in hearing aids from competing talkers in reverberant rooms
Patrick M. Peterson · 2005
Adaptive beamforming techniques can be applied to the problem of reducing interference in monaural hearing aids from sound sources that are spatially separated from a target source. We implemented a two-microphone Griffiths-Jim [1] beamformer in simulated reverberant environments (anechoic space, living room, and conference room) in which target sentences originated straight-ahead of the array and interfering speech babble originated 45° off-axis. We evaluated the system with intelligibility tests administered to normal-hearing subjects. Compared to listening through a single microphone, the two-microphone beamformer reduced the target-to-interference ratio required for 50% keyword intelligibility by 30, 14, and 0 dB in the anechoic, living-room, and conference-room conditions, respectively.