Study of Presbycusis and Single Microphone Noise Reduction Techniques for Hearing Aids
Kondru Ayyappa Swamy, Samuda Prathima, N. Padmaja · 2018
Age-Related hearing loss or Presbycusis is a slow, progressive hearing loss and affects both ears equally. First signs of hearing loss are inability to understand speech in noisy environments. This study includes the changes in the response of auditory filter and the hearing thresholds due to the masking sounds for elderly with hearing impaired. The hearing aid designer should come across this study before designing a suitable device not just only amplifying the sounds. The dynamic range of hearing thresholds especially for hearing impaired changes due to Masking. Therefore, to understand the speech for hearing impaired requires high SNRs due to broadening of auditory filter compared to normal hearing. To improve the SNR, it is challenging to select best noise reduction technique among plenty. This study presents number of SMNR methods to get clean speech by estimating noise from noisy speech. It is also discusses the combination of the techniques and the idea behind the techniques.