Hearing aid with improved localization

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9338561-B2
Application number	US-201313872720-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 29, 2013
Priority date	Dec 28, 2012
Publication date	May 10, 2016
Grant date	May 10, 2016

Abstract

A method of determining parameters of a BTE hearing aid having at least one ITE microphone and at least one BTE microphone, the method includes: determining Head-Related Transfer functions HRTF l (ƒ); determining a hearing aid related transfer function H l,i ITEC (ƒ) of a i th microphone of the at least one ITE microphone for direction l; determining a hearing aid related transfer functions H l,j BTEC (ƒ) of a j th microphone of the at least one BTE microphone; determining transfer functions G i IEC (ƒ) of a i th cue filter of at least one cue filter filtering audio sound signals of the at least one ITE microphone; and determining transfer functions G j BTEC (ƒ) of a j th cue filter of the at least one cue filter filtering audio sound signals of the at least one BTE microphone; wherein the transfer functions G i IEC (ƒ) and the transfer functions G j BTEC (ƒ) are determined using a processing unit based on equation:

min G i IEC (ƒ),G i BTEC (ƒ) Σ l=0 L-1 W ( l )∥ W (ƒ)HRTF l (ƒ)−Σ i G i IEC (ƒ) H l,i IEC (ƒ)−Σ j G j BTEC (ƒ) H l,j BTEC (ƒ))∥ p .

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method of determining parameters of a behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid having at least one in-the-ear (ITE) microphone and at least one BTE microphone, the method comprising:
determining transfer functions that include spatial cues;
determining a hearing aid related transfer function H l,i IEC (ƒ) of a i th microphone of the at least one ITE microphone for direction l;
determining a hearing aid related transfer functions H l,j BTEC (ƒ) of a j th microphone of the at least one BTE microphone;
determining transfer functions G i IEC (ƒ) of a i th cue filter of at least one cue filter filtering audio sound signals of the at least one ITE microphone; and
determining transfer functions G j BTEC (ƒ) of a i th cue filter of the at least one cue filter filtering audio sound signals of the at least one BTE microphone;
wherein the transfer functions G i IEC (ƒ) and the transfer functions G j BTEC (ƒ) are determined using a processing unit in the BTE hearing aid, the processing unit configured to solve a minimization problem based on the transfer functions that include the spatial cues, the hearing aid related transfer function H l,i IEC (ƒ), and the hearing aid related transfer function H l,j BTEC (ƒ).

2. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising:
determining a transfer function H FB,i IEC (ƒ) of a feedback path associated with the i th microphone of the at least one ITE microphone; and
determining a transfer function H FB,j BTEC (ƒ) of a feedback path associated with the j th microphone of the at least one BTE microphone.

3. The method according to claim 2 , further comprising:
determining filter coefficients of the at least one cue filter associated with the at least one ITE microphone, and filter coefficients of the at least one cue filter associated with the at least one BTE microphone by solving:

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Assignees

• Gn Resound As

Inventors

• Gran Karl-Fredrik Johan
• Ma Guilin

Classifications

• H04R25/407 Primary

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

• H04S2420/01

  Enhancing the perception of the sound image or of the spatial distribution using head related transfer functions [HRTF's] or equivalents thereof, e.g. interaural time difference [ITD] or interaural level difference [ILD] · CPC title

• H04R25/405

  by combining a plurality of transducers · CPC title