A high performance microphone array system for hearing aid applications
and K. H. Wang, K. Yao, Ralph E. Hudson, D. Korompis, Flavio Lorenzelli, Sig Soli, Shuyang Gao · 2002
Microphone array technology has been proposed for various audio, teleconference, and hearing aid applications. By forming a focused beam toward the desired speech source, attenuating background noises and rejecting discrete spatial interferers, a microphone array can enhance the SNR/SIR in a noisy environment with significant improvement in speech intelligibility. An array can also perform real time source-localization or direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation in various applications. We present a high performance prototype PC-based microphone array system for hearing aid applications. Algorithms for maximum energy criterion array weight design needed in the speech processing mode as well as modified broadband near-field MUSIC schemes in the search mode are discussed. Then a PC-based microphone array system using a TMS320C40 DSP is described. Preliminary study of equalizing non-uniform response microphones is also discussed. Finally, some array performance results in free-space and reverberant room conditions are presented.