Spatially Correct Multi-Microphone Noise Reduction Strategies suitable for Hearing Aids (SCMMNRSHA)

With a prevalence of about 11 %, severe hearing loss has become a serious problem in our society. While the current generation of hearing aids can be of a great help in certain situations, they generally are not able to provide the hearing-aid user a natural impression of the acoustical scene. An often-reported problem for hearing impaired people is the inability to understand speech in complex acoustical environments as well as the inability to localize sound.

Due to the development of wireless technology, it is possible to equip hearing aids with more powerful noise reduction algorithms to further increase the intelligibility. However, these more powerful multichannel noise reduction algorithms sacrifice naturalness of the sound environment, also when state-of-the-art binaural noise reduction algorithms are used.

This project aims at developing signal processing algorithms to help hearing aid users in these situations, by providing them a natural impression of the acoustical scene. The research involves the automatic configuration of the hearing aid such that the performance in terms of noise-reduction capabilities is maximized given certain constraints. These constraints can be the rate needed for transmitting information between the hearing aids, the computational complexity of the beamformer algorithm or, ultimately, the power consumption.