Hearing assistance method

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10284971-B2
Application number	US-201415510342-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 2, 2014
Priority date	Oct 2, 2014
Publication date	May 7, 2019
Grant date	May 7, 2019

Abstract

A method of providing hearing assistance to a at least one user wearing at least one receiver hearing assistance device from at least one audio transmission device worn by a another user, involving: automatically pairing and connecting the audio transmission device with the receiver hearing assistance device to form an ad-hoc network for exchanging network and/or control information, estimating at least one of an angular direction of the audio transmission device with regard to a viewing direction of the user of the receiver hearing assistance device and an angular direction of the receiver hearing assistance device with regard to a viewing direction of the user of the audio transmission device, admitting the audio transmission device to a wireless local acoustic area network for exchanging audio signals only if, as a predefined admission rule, the transmission device is within a field of view of one of the users.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of providing hearing assistance to a at least one user wearing at least one receiver hearing assistance device capable of receiving audio signals via a radio frequency (RF) link from at least one audio transmission device worn by another user, and capable of transmitting audio signals, each device comprising a wireless network interface, the method comprising:
automatically pairing and connecting the at least one audio transmission device on a service level with the at least one receiver hearing assistance device through the wireless network interface thereof to form an ad hoc network to exchange at least one of network and control information,
estimating at least one of an angular direction of the at least one audio transmission device with regard to a viewing direction of the user of the at least one receiver hearing assistance device and an angular direction of the at least one receiver hearing assistance device with regard to a viewing direction of the user of the at least one audio transmission device, and
admitting the at least one audio transmission device to a wireless local acoustic area network for exchanging audio signals with the at least one receiver hearing assistance device only if, as a predefined admission rule, the at least one transmission device is within a field of view of the user of the at least one receiver hearing assistance device or the at least one receiver hearing assistance device is within a field of view of the user of the at least one audio transmission device, wherein the field of view is an angular sector centered around the respective viewing direction.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein, as a further admission rule, the at least one audio transmission device is admitted to the wireless local acoustic area network only if the distance of the at least one audio transmission device to at least one of the at least one receiver hearing assistance devices of the wireless local acoustic area network is below a proximity threshold value and/or a quality measure of the RF link to one of the devices of the wireless local acoustic area network is above a quality level threshold value.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the proximity threshold value and/or the quality level threshold value varies as a function of an estimated environmental sound level around the device as estimated from the audio signal captured by the respective device.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein, with increasing the estimated environmental sound level, the proximity threshold value decreases and the quality level threshold value increases, respectively.

5. The method of claim 2 , wherein the proximity threshold value varies between 1 m and 10 m.

6. The method of claim 2 , wherein a device is removed from the local acoustic area network if none of the other devices of the local acoustic area network has been within the field of view of the user of the device for a time interval longer than a field-of-view timeout threshold value, or if the device has exceeded the proximity threshold with regard to at least one of the devices of the local acoustic area network for a time interval longer than a proximity timeout threshold value, or if an RF link quality measure between the device and all devices of the local acoustic area network has not exceeded the RF link quality threshold for a time interval longer than a RF link quality timeout threshold value.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the proximity timeout threshold, the field-of-view timeout threshold and the RF link quality timeout threshold values are all different.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein at least one the proximity timeout threshold, the field-of-view timeout threshold and the RF link quality timeout threshold values are given as a function of an accumulated time that a respective device has already been previously admitted to the local acoustic area network.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the proximity timeout threshold and/or the field-of-view timeout threshold and/or the RF link quality timeout threshold value increase with increasing accumulated time the respective device has already been admitted to the LAAN before.

10. The method of claim 7 , wherein at least one of the timeout thresholds is between 1 s and 60 s.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the at least one receiver device comprises a user interface for enabling the user to disable reception of the audio signal from a selected one of the transmission devices or to at least reduce the weight of the audio signal from a selected one of the transmission devices in the output signal.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one receiver hearing assistance device is a device adapted to be worn at or at least in part in an ear of the user, and wherein the at least one receiver hearing assistance device comprises pairs of receiver hearing assistance devices, each pair forming a binaural system.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein said angular direction of the transmission device with regard to the viewing direction of the user of the pair of receiver devices is estimated based on a difference of a signal strength parameter of an RF signal emitted by the respective transmission device and received by a first one of the pair of receiver devices worn at first ear of the user and a second of the pair of receiver devices worn at a second ear of the user.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein said angular direction of the at least one transmission device with regard to the viewing direction of the user of the pair of receiver devices is estimated based on a phase difference of an acoustic speech signal of the user of the respective transmission device as received by a first microphone of a first one of the pair of receiver devices worn at one ear of the user and a second microphone of either the first or a second one of the pair of receiver devices worn at the other ear of the user.

15. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
transmitting, from each audio transmission device admitted to the local acoustic area network, an audio signal via the wireless local acoustic area network only if at least one of the following transmission rules is fulfilled:
the audio signal captured by the respective audio transmission device has a level above an audio level threshold value,
an audio signal quality measure, such as a signal to noise ratio, of the audio signal captured by the respective audio transmission device is above an audio signal quality measure threshold value,
a distance measure between the audio transmission device and at least one of the receiver devices of the local acoustic area network is below a distance threshold value,
a quality measure of the RF link to at least one of the receiver hearing assistance devices of the local acoustic area network is above an RF link quality threshold value, and
the transmission device is within a field of view of the at least one user of at least one of the receiver hearing assistance devices of the local acoustic area network and said at least one of the receiver hearing assistance devices is within a field of view of the user of the audio transmission device, wherein the field of view is an angular sector centered around the respective viewing direction of the user;
receiving, by at least one of the receiver hearing assistance devices, audio signals transmitted from the audio transmission devices, generating an output audio signal, and supplying the output audio signal to the user of the receiver hearing assistance device in order to stimulate the user's hearing, wherein, if audio signals are received from more than one of the

Assignees

• Sonova Ag

Inventors

• Secall Marc
• Roeck Hans-Ueli
• Callias Francois
• Feilner Manuela

Classifications

• H04R25/405

  by combining a plurality of transducers · CPC title

• H04R25/43

  Electronic input selection or mixing based on input signal analysis, e.g. mixing or selection between microphone and telecoil or between microphones with different directivity characteristics (H04R25/407 takes precedence) · CPC title

• H04R2225/55

  Communication between hearing aids and external devices via a network for data exchange · CPC title

• H04R25/554 Primary

  using a wireless connection, e.g. between microphone and amplifier or using Tcoils · CPC title

• H04R25/407

  Circuits for combining signals of a plurality of transducers · CPC title