Ear-wearable Mode Switching via Wireless Quality
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing ear-wearable devices face challenges in efficiently switching between binaural and bilateral operating modes, leading to over-switching, battery life reduction, and diminished user experience due to difficulties in estimating speech presence in noise and relying on binaural audio transmission.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of techniques that allow ear-wearable devices to switch between binaural and bilateral modes based on environmental noise levels and wireless quality parameters, limiting wireless communication and ensuring efficient and robust mode switching, thereby reducing unnecessary battery consumption and improving user experience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If ear-wearable devices continuously switch between binaural and bilateral modes based on speech presence estimation, then speech intelligibility is improved, but battery life is reduced due to frequent mode switching and wireless communication
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors acoustic environment parameters (speech presence, noise levels) and adjusts operating mode based on feedback from these measurements, optimizing speech intelligibility while managing energy consumption through condition-based mode selection rather than continuous switching
Solution Approach 2:
The operating mode is made dynamic and adaptable to changing environmental conditions, allowing the device to transition between bilateral and binaural modes based on real-time acoustic scene analysis, thereby improving speech intelligibility when needed while conserving battery life when binaural processing is not required
2Measurement precision
If ear-wearable devices rely on binaural audio transmission for mode switching, then mode switching accuracy is improved, but device complexity increases due to wireless communication requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses an intermediary mobile device to facilitate communication between the two ear-wearable devices, allowing them to exchange audio signals and synchronization information without requiring direct peer-to-peer wireless communication, thereby reducing the communication complexity embedded in each ear-wearable device
Solution Approach 2:
The complex wireless communication functionality is extracted from the ear-wearable devices and relocated to an external mobile device, simplifying the ear-wearable devices while maintaining the ability to perform synchronized binaural processing when needed
3Reliability
If ear-wearable devices use binaural beamforming to increase signal-to-noise ratio, then speech intelligibility is improved, but loss of spatial audio information occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts the degree of spatial information preservation based on operating mode, maintaining full spatial information in bilateral mode while applying selective beamforming in binaural mode to enhance speech intelligibility only in critical frequency and time regions where speech presence is detected
Solution Approach 2:
The beamforming processing is applied locally and selectively to specific frequency bands and time segments where speech is present, rather than uniformly across the entire audio spectrum, thereby improving speech intelligibility while preserving spatial information in regions where it is not needed for speech enhancement
Data Source
AI summary
A local device of an auditory device system is configured to perform a process that switches between operating modes. As part of the process, the local device may determine a wireless quality parameter indicative of a current environment for wireless communication with the contra device. Additionally, based on the one or more local input audio signals and the wireless quality parameter, the local device may determine whether to change a local active operating mode of the local device from a bilateral mode to a binaural mode or from the binaural mode to the bilateral mode. The local device may generate a local output audio signal based on the one or more local input audio signals in accordance with the local active operating mode and may produce sound based on the local output audio signal.