Hearing Aid Vent Direct Transmission Gain Adjustment

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Solution Overview

Problem

Current hearing aid noise reduction techniques fail to effectively account for direct sound transmission through ventilation channels and leaks, leading to suboptimal speech intelligibility in noisy environments.

Innovation Solution

A hearing aid system that calculates and adjusts its gain based on direct transmission gain, incorporating knowledge of vent effects and leakage to optimize noise reduction and avoid phase disruption, using a signal processing means to determine and store direct transmission gain and apply appropriate hearing aid gain.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If noise reduction techniques increase hearing aid gain in selected frequency bands, then speech intelligibility in noise is improved, but direct transmitted sound through vents may dominate and cause phase disruption

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvespeech intelligibilityVSAvoidphase stability

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system uses feedback from a feedback test to estimate the direct transmission gain through the vent, and dynamically adjusts the hearing aid gain based on this feedback to prevent phase disruption while maintaining noise reduction effectiveness

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Solution Approach 2:

The system changes the gain parameter dynamically in different frequency bands based on the estimated direct transmission characteristics, adjusting the hearing aid gain to be higher than the direct transmission gain only where needed to avoid phase disruption

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

2Object-affected harmful factors

If hearing aid gain is decreased to reduce noise, then noise reduction is improved, but speech intelligibility suffers when direct transmitted sound dominates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvenoise reductionVSAvoidspeech intelligibility

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSMeasurement precision

Solution Approach 1:

The system applies different gain adjustments in different frequency bands based on local conditions - increasing gain in bands where direct transmission is low and maintaining or decreasing gain where direct transmission is high, optimizing both noise reduction and speech intelligibility locally

Inventive Principle:

Principle #3Local quality

3Ease of operation

If vent size is increased for user comfort, then ease of operation is improved, but direct sound transmission increases causing noise reduction to fail

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveuser comfortVSAvoiddirect sound transmission

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of operationVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs a feedback test to measure the actual direct transmission gain through the vent, allowing it to adapt to different vent sizes and configurations, and adjusts the hearing aid gain accordingly to compensate for increased direct transmission

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Data Source

PatentUS8422709B2Method and system of noise reduction in a hearing aid

Publication Date: 2013.04.16 WIDEX AS

AI summary

A hearing aid (200) comprises at least one microphone (210), a signal processing means (220) and an output transducer (230). The signal processing means is adapted to receive an input signal from the microphone. The signal processing means is adapted to apply a hearing aid gain to the input signal to produce an output signal to be output by the output transducer, and the signal processing means comprises means for adjusting the hearing aid gain by a direct transmission gain calculated for the hearing aid. The invention further provides a method and a system for reducing noise, as well as a computer program product.