An Individualized Super-Gaussian Single Microphone Speech Enhancement for Hearing Aid Users With Smartphone as an Assistive Device
Chandan K. A. Reddy, Nikhil Shankar, Gautam Shreedhar Bhat, Ram Charan, Issa M. S. Panahi · IEEE Signal Processing Letters · 2017
In this letter, we derive a new super-Gaussian joint maximuma posteriori(SGJMAP) based single microphone speech enhancement gain function. The developed speech enhancement method is implemented on a smartphone, and this arrangement functions as an assistive device to hearing aids. We introduce atradeoffparameter in the derived gain function that allows the smartphone user to customize their listening preference, by controlling the amount of noise suppression and speech distortion in real-time based on their level of hearing comfort perceived in noisy real-world acoustic environment. Objective quality and intelligibility measures show the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison to benchmark techniques considered in this letter. Subjective results reflect the usefulness of the developed speech enhancement application in real-world noisy conditions at signal to noise ratio levels of –5, 0, and 5 dB.