A Rapid Prototyping model concept for a DSP based hearing aid
Radu Arsinte, Eugen Lupu, Teodor Sumalan · 2017
Hearing aids are a field of medical devices, powered by digital signal processing techniques. Development of hearing aid modules is realized usually in the first stages using prototyping boards equipped with specialized Embedded DSP. The paper presents a generic model of a hearing aid developed on a DSP development system. The method used to develop and prototype the model (Rapid prototyping) is the core contribution of the paper. Starting from a standard algorithm flow, the system allows to demonstrate and to experiment the basic principles and processing algorithms in hearing aids. The purpose is mainly educational, but with the potential for a commercial application. The main advantage is the possibility to visualize, analyze and enhance every step of the processing flow. To develop, test and demonstrate the functionality we used simple Virtual Instrumentation concepts, making possible to keep all the components of the test bench in a single PC.