Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research (대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지)

The Korean Society of Medical and Biological Engineering (대한의용생체공학회)
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Objective Evaluation of Beamforming Techniques for Hearing Devices with Two-channel Microphone

2채널 마이크로폰을 이용한 청각 기기에서의 빔포밍에 대한 객관적 검증

  • Cho, Kyeong-Won (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University) ;
  • Han, Jong-Hee (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University) ;
  • Hong, Sung-Hwa (Department of ORL-HNS, Sungkyunkwan University) ;
  • Lee, Sang-Min (Department of Electronic Engineering, Inha University) ;
  • Kim, Dong-Wook (Bio & Health Lab, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology) ;
  • Kim, In-Young (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University) ;
  • Kim, Sun-I. (Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University)
  • 조경원 (한양대학교 의용생체공학과) ;
  • 한종희 (한양대학교 의용생체공학과) ;
  • 홍성화 (성균관대학교 의과대학 이비인후과학교실) ;
  • 이상민 (인하대학교 전자공학과) ;
  • 김동욱 (삼성종합기술원 바이오헬스연구실) ;
  • 김인영 (한양대학교 의용생체공학과) ;
  • 김선일 (한양대학교 의용생체공학과)
  • Received : 2011.01.26
  • Accepted : 2011.06.24
  • Published : 2011.09.30
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Abstract

Hearing devices like cochlear implant, vibrant soundbridge, etc. try to offer better sound for people. In hearing devices, several beamformers including conventional directional microphone are applicable to noise reduction. Each beamformer has different directional response and it could change sound intelligibility or quality for listeners. Therefore, we investigated the performance of three beamformers, which are first and second order directional microphone, and broadband beamformer(BBF) with a computer simulation assuming hearing device microphone configuration. We also calculated objective measurements which have been used to evaluate speech enhancement algorithms. In the simulation, a single speech and a single babble noisewere propagated from the front and $135^{\circ}$ azimuth degrees respectively. Microphones were configured in an end-fire array and the spacing was varied in comparison. With 3 cm spacing, BBF had about 3 dB higher enhanced SNR than that of directional microphones. However, enhancement of segmental SNR and frequency weighted segmental SNR were similar between the first order directional microphone and broadband beamformer. In addition when steady state noise was used, broadband beamformer showed the increased performance and had the highest enhanced SNR, and segmental SNR.

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