Binaural Hearing Aid Beamforming With Spatial Cue Preservation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Hearing-impaired individuals face challenges in listening to desired speakers in noisy environments due to distorted or lost spatial auditory cues in existing binaural hearing aid systems, despite improved signal-to-noise ratios.
Innovation Solution
A binaural hearing aid system using indoor positioning sensors and head tracking to generate bilateral beamforming signals with enhanced preservation of spatial cues by determining the user's orientation and speaker positions, applying head-related transfer functions for spatialization of speech signals.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If binaurally beamformed microphone signals are used to improve signal-to-noise ratio, then speech intelligibility is improved, but spatial auditory cues such as ILD and ITD become distorted or lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the audio signal processing into separate channels: a first channel for desired speakers and a second channel for other speakers and noise. This segmentation allows independent processing of spatial cues for different sound sources, preserving ILD and ITD information while improving speech intelligibility through directional beamforming only where needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different processing characteristics to different spatial regions. Beamforming with high directivity is applied locally to desired speakers to improve SNR, while spatial cues are preserved for other speakers. This local differentiation allows simultaneous optimization of speech intelligibility and spatial cue preservation.
2Power
If high directivity index is achieved through binaural beamforming, then signal-to-noise ratio increases, but spatial auditory processing capability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent dynamically adjusts the directivity index based on the spatial distribution of sound sources. When desired speakers are identified, high directivity beamforming is applied to improve SNR. When only other speakers or noise are present, the system maintains lower directivity to preserve spatial cues. This dynamic adaptation resolves the contradiction between SNR improvement and spatial processing capability.
Data Source
AI summary
The present disclosure relates to binaural hearing aid systems and methods of enhancing speech of one or more desired speakers in a listening room using indoor positioning sensors and systems.