Piecewise-Linear Frequency Shifting Algorithm for Frequency Resolution Enhancement in Digital Hearing Aids

Wang, Qingyun; Liang, Ruiyu; Rahardja, Susanto; Zhao, Liye; Zou, Cairong; Zhao, Li

doi:10.3390/app7040335

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In the study of Wang et al, the subjective assessment over six deaf individuals with V-form audiogram suggests that there is approximately 10% recovery in the score of talk separation for monosyllabic Word lists tested in a silent acoustic environment [17].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

Wearable Vibration Based Computer Interaction and Communication System for Deaf

Yağanoğlu

Köse

2017

Applied Sciences

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Abstract:In individuals with impaired hearing, determining the direction of sound is a significant problem. The direction of sound was determined in this study, which allowed hearing impaired individuals to perceive where sounds originated. This study also determined whether something was being spoken loudly near the hearing impaired individual. In this manner, it was intended that they should be able to recognize panic conditions more quickly. The developed wearable system has four microphone inlets, two vibration motor outlets, and four Light Emitting Diode (LED) outlets. The vibration of motors placed on the right and left fingertips permits the indication of the direction of sound through specific vibration frequencies. This study applies the ReliefF feature selection method to evaluate every feature in comparison to other features and determine which features are more effective in the classification phase. This study primarily selects the best feature extraction and classification methods. Then, the prototype device has been tested using these selected methods on themselves. ReliefF feature selection methods are used in the studies; the success of K nearest neighborhood (Knn) classification had a 93% success rate and classification with Support Vector Machine (SVM) had a 94% success rate. At close range, SVM and two of the best feature methods were used and returned a 98% success rate. When testing our wearable devices on users in real time, we used a classification technique to detect the direction and our wearable devices responded in 0.68 s; this saves power in comparison to traditional direction detection methods. Meanwhile, if there was an echo in an indoor environment, the success rate increased; the echo canceller was disabled in environments without an echo to save power. We also compared our system with the localization algorithm based on the microphone array; the wearable device that we developed had a high success rate and it produced faster results at lower cost than other methods. This study provides a new idea for the benefit of deaf individuals that is preferable to a computer environment.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

Wearable Vibration Based Computer Interaction and Communication System for Deaf

Yağanoğlu

Köse

2017

Applied Sciences

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“…The presence of noise reduces the effective dynamic range for CI users by compressing the region of audibility into the upper position of the dynamic range [14]. Good speech perception in noise is a target in the management of deafness [15][16][17][18] and this aspect is also of great importance when CI coding strategies are concerned. Thus, tests in noise are more sensitive to changes in the fitting parameters and more ecological than tests in quiet conditions.…”

Section: Influence Of Noisementioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing in Noise: The Importance of Coding Strategies—Normal-Hearing Subjects and Cochlear Implant Users

et al. 2019

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Two schemes are mainly used for coding sounds in cochlear implants: Fixed-Channel and Channel-Picking. This study aims to determine the speech audiometry scores in noise of people using either type of sound coding scheme. Twenty normal-hearing and 45 cochlear implant subjects participated in this experiment. Both populations were tested by using dissyllabic words mixed with cocktail-party noise. A cochlear implant simulator was used to test the normal-hearing subjects. This simulator separated the sound into 20 spectral channels and the eight most energetic were selected to simulate the Channel-Picking strategy. For normal-hearing subjects, we noticed higher scores with the Fixed-Channel strategy than with the Channel-Picking strategy in the mid-range signal-to-noise ratios (0 to +6 dB). For cochlear implant users, no differences were found between the two coding schemes but we could see a slight advantage for the Fixed-Channel strategies over the Channel-Picking strategies. For both populations, a difference was observed for the signal-to-noise ratios at 50% of the maximum recognition plateau in favour of the Fixed-Channel strategy. To conclude, in the most common signal-to-noise ratio conditions, a Fixed-Channel coding strategy may lead to better recognition percentages than a Channel-Picking strategy. Further studies are indicated to confirm this.

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A Design Method for Gammachirp Filterbank for Loudness Compensation in Hearing Aids

et al. 2022

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Because the hearing impaired often experience different degrees of hearing loss along with the loss of frequencies, the loudness compensation algorithm in hearing aids decomposes the speech signal and compensates with different frequency bands based on their audiograms. However, the speech quality of the compensated signal is unsatisfactory because the traditional filterbanks fail to fully consider the characteristics of human hearing and personalized hearing loss. In this study, an effective design for the gammachirp filterbank for the loudness compensation algorithm was proposed to improve the speech quality of hearing aids. Firstly, a multichannel gammachirp filterbank was employed to decompose the signals. Then, the adjacent bands were merged into one channel, guided by the proposed combination method. After obtaining the personalized filterbank, each band conducted a loudness compensation to match the requirements of the audiograms. The excellent advantage of the gammachirp filterbank is that it can simulate the characteristics of the basilar membrane. Furthermore, the novel channel combination method considers the information from the audiograms and the relationship between frequency ranges and speech intelligibility. The experimental results showed that the proposed multichannel gammachirp filterbank achieves better speech signal decomposition and synthesis, and good performance can be gained with fewer channels. The loudness compensation algorithm based on the gammachirp filterbank effectively improves sentence intelligibility. The sentence recognition rate of the proposed method is higher than that of a system with a gammatone filterbank by approximately 13%.

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Piecewise-Linear Frequency Shifting Algorithm for Frequency Resolution Enhancement in Digital Hearing Aids

Cited by 3 publications

References 19 publications

Wearable Vibration Based Computer Interaction and Communication System for Deaf

Wearable Vibration Based Computer Interaction and Communication System for Deaf

Hearing in Noise: The Importance of Coding Strategies—Normal-Hearing Subjects and Cochlear Implant Users

A Design Method for Gammachirp Filterbank for Loudness Compensation in Hearing Aids

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