EP1017253B1 - Blind source separation for hearing aids - Google Patents

Blind source separation for hearing aids Download PDF

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Publication number
EP1017253B1
EP1017253B1 EP99310611A EP99310611A EP1017253B1 EP 1017253 B1 EP1017253 B1 EP 1017253B1 EP 99310611 A EP99310611 A EP 99310611A EP 99310611 A EP99310611 A EP 99310611A EP 1017253 B1 EP1017253 B1 EP 1017253B1
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EP
European Patent Office
Prior art keywords
signal
input signals
unmixing
signals
microphones
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Revoked
Application number
EP99310611A
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German (de)
English (en)
French (fr)
Other versions
EP1017253A3 (en
EP1017253A2 (en
Inventor
Justinian Rosca
Christian Darken
Thomas Petsche
Inga Holube
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Sivantos GmbH
Siemens Corp
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Siemens Corp
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Publication date
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Application filed by Siemens Corp filed Critical Siemens Corp
Publication of EP1017253A2 publication Critical patent/EP1017253A2/en
Publication of EP1017253A3 publication Critical patent/EP1017253A3/en
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    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04R—LOUDSPEAKERS, MICROPHONES, GRAMOPHONE PICK-UPS OR LIKE ACOUSTIC ELECTROMECHANICAL TRANSDUCERS; DEAF-AID SETS; PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS
    • H04R25/00—Deaf-aid sets, i.e. electro-acoustic or electro-mechanical hearing aids; Electric tinnitus maskers providing an auditory perception
    • H04R25/40—Arrangements for obtaining a desired directivity characteristic
    • H04R25/405—Arrangements for obtaining a desired directivity characteristic by combining a plurality of transducers
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04R—LOUDSPEAKERS, MICROPHONES, GRAMOPHONE PICK-UPS OR LIKE ACOUSTIC ELECTROMECHANICAL TRANSDUCERS; DEAF-AID SETS; PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS
    • H04R25/00—Deaf-aid sets, i.e. electro-acoustic or electro-mechanical hearing aids; Electric tinnitus maskers providing an auditory perception
    • H04R25/40—Arrangements for obtaining a desired directivity characteristic
    • H04R25/407—Circuits for combining signals of a plurality of transducers
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04R—LOUDSPEAKERS, MICROPHONES, GRAMOPHONE PICK-UPS OR LIKE ACOUSTIC ELECTROMECHANICAL TRANSDUCERS; DEAF-AID SETS; PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS
    • H04R2225/00—Details of deaf aids covered by H04R25/00, not provided for in any of its subgroups
    • H04R2225/43—Signal processing in hearing aids to enhance the speech intelligibility
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04R—LOUDSPEAKERS, MICROPHONES, GRAMOPHONE PICK-UPS OR LIKE ACOUSTIC ELECTROMECHANICAL TRANSDUCERS; DEAF-AID SETS; PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS
    • H04R25/00—Deaf-aid sets, i.e. electro-acoustic or electro-mechanical hearing aids; Electric tinnitus maskers providing an auditory perception
    • H04R25/50—Customised settings for obtaining desired overall acoustical characteristics
    • H04R25/505—Customised settings for obtaining desired overall acoustical characteristics using digital signal processing
    • H04R25/507—Customised settings for obtaining desired overall acoustical characteristics using digital signal processing implemented by neural network or fuzzy logic

Definitions

  • the present invention generally relates to electronic filtering for enhancing a desired signal component of a mixed signal, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for real-time unmixing (separation or deconvolving) of a desired signal from a mixture of independent signals, particularly useful, for example, in a hearing aid.
  • noise When one is listening to someone or something, "noise" or undesired signals that interfere with the voice or desired signal, are ubiquitous. People with hearing impairment are especially vulnerable to noise. Background conversations, interference from digital devices (mobile telephones), car, or other specific environment noises, can make it very difficult for a hearing impaired person to understand a desired speech signal.
  • a reduction in the noise level of a signal, coupled with an automatic focus on a desired signal component, can significantly improve the performance of an electronic voice processor, such as one used in an advanced hearing aid.
  • WO 97/11533 discloses a directional acoustic signal processor and EP 0 883 325 discloses a method and processor for processing sounds, suitable for use in association with a hearing aid, which maximizes the signal to noise ratio of a signal from a source in an on-beam direction.
  • hearing aids using digital signal processing have been introduced. They contain one or more microphones, analog to digital converters, digital signal processors, and speakers. Usually the digital signal processors divide the incoming signals into several frequency regions using filter banks. Within each of those regions, signal gain and dynamic compression parameters can be individually adjusted in accordance with the requirement for a particular user of the hearing aid, in an attempt to improve intelligibility. Additionally, digital signal processing algorithms for feedback reduction and noise reduction are available, however they have major limitations. For example, some of the disadvantages of the currently available algorithms for noise reduction are the limited improvement they obtain when speech and background noise are in the same frequency region, due to their inability to distinguish between speech and background noise.
  • BSS Blind Source Separation
  • An electronic filtering device for performing real-time unmixing of a signal desired to be recovered by a user of the device, where the desired signal emanates from one of a plurality of independent signal sources.
  • Two microphones positioned along a common axis develop first and second electrical input signals in response to reception by the microphones of acoustic signals from the plurality of independent signal sources.
  • the spatial position of the common axis of the microphones is controllable in real time by the user to align the common axis so it points in the direction of the source of the desired signal, thereby imparting an inherent directionality to the input signals.
  • An adaptive unmixing signal processor responsive to the input signals develops output signals wherein the desired signal is separated from the mixture signal.
  • a preprocessor is provided to enhance the inherent directionality of the input signals by establishing a relative time delay therebetween. Furthermore, the preprocessor may subject the enhanced input signals to a decorrelation processing before their application to the unmixing signal processor.
  • a selected output of the unmixing signal processor can be applied as an input to a speaker for reproduction, or can be further processed for signal enhancement by an additional processor before reproduction.
  • FIG. 1 illustrates in block diagram form an application of the invention for use in hearing aids.
  • a hearing aid 10 includes two microphones 12 and 14 for developing two input signals 1 and 2, respectively.
  • the microphones are mounted in the hearing aid such that a common axis of their positioning always extends substantially in the direction in which the wearer of the hearing aid looks when being attentive to a signal source such as a voice.
  • This microphone positioning imparts an inherent directionality to input signals 1 and 2. Since each microphone develops electrical signals representative of the acoustic waves received thereby from sound sources within it's operating range, each input signal may comprise a mixture of unknown signals from an unknown number of signal sources.
  • Input signals 1 and 2 are processed in three main stages.
  • the input signals are preprocessed for enhancing the inherent directionality already imparted thereto by their positioning.
  • the resulting signals are subjected to an unmixing processing (sometimes referred to as separation processing), which is designed to produce estimates of the original unknown signals picked-up by microphones 12 and 14.
  • the outputs of the unmixing processing are preferably postprocessed to produce the desired signal 22, which can then be applied to a speaker 24 of the hearing aid 10 for reproduction and presentation to a user.
  • preprocessing stage 16 begins with normalization of the raw input signals.
  • Automatic Gain Control is used to normalize input signals 1 and 2 to a [-1,+1] range.
  • preprocessing stage 16 in order to adapt a blind source separation (BSS) technique for use in a device as small as a hearing aid, and to have it operate in real-time, preprocessing stage 16 also provides at least the first, and preferably both of the following additional processing:
  • the window D comprised 16,000 samples.
  • the above described preprocessing facilitates the subsequent BSS processing to arrive at a solution in a shorter time than if the preprocessing was not provided, and furthermore, increases the probability that the BSS processing will arrive at a valid solution instead of a local minimum.
  • Figure 3 illustrates the principles of the operation of a BSS algorithm upon which the unmixing or separation of the desired component from the input signals is based.
  • the technique is called Blind Source Separation because it makes few assumptions about the type of signals present in the mixture.
  • BSS processing is intended to recover the set of n unknown source signals from a set of their mixtures, assuming that the n source signals are independent. More specifically, as shown in Figure 3 , if s is a vector of n sources, and x is a vector of m observations of those sources (i.e., the raw input signals from the m microphones), the goal of a BSS processor is to discover the m by n mixing matrix A:
  • the sources s (s 1 , s 2 ) and the environment-dependent mixing matrix A are unknown.
  • FIG. 4 illustrates a block diagram of the main components of a BSS processor 400.
  • BSS processor 400 comprises: an unmixing component 402 for recording and updating the state of the unmixing process defined by parameters W and v; a nonlinear component 404 for generating statistics used in the adaptation process; and an adaptation component 406 for computing changes in the values of the unmixing parameters, ⁇ W and ⁇ v.
  • the BSS processor 400 continuously adapts two state variables: the 2 by 2 unmixing matrix W, and the 2 by 1 bias vector b .
  • the nonlinear component 404 transforms the output of the system using an invertible mapping.
  • the objective of component 404 is to avoid processing very large numeric values of the outputs, which may be infinities from a computational point of view. This objective is carried out by processing statistically equivalent quantities, obtained after running the outputs z through the invertible mapping.
  • the adaptation component 406 determines changes in the unmixing parameters W and v: i.e., ⁇ W and ⁇ v.
  • the objective is to maximize the mutual information that the outputs y contain about the inputs x , as well known to those skilled in this technology, and as described, for example by A.J. Bell and T.J. Sejnowski in their article entitled "An information-maximization approach to blind separation and blind deconvolution" published in Neural Computation, 7:1129-1159, 1995, and as also described in Bell's US patent 5,706,402 .
  • a typical value for the learning rate ⁇ is 0.005.
  • unmixer 18 is the postprocessing step 20, wherein a determination is made of which output estimate of unmixer 18 is more likely to represent voice rather than noise, as well as a normalization of the power of the outputs by scaling them to the level of the input powers.
  • the output signal section can be based on multiple criteria using, for example, voice specific feature extraction and analysis, and/or dominant speaker detection, which can also be accomplished using feature extraction and analysis.
  • the BSS processing is applied for use in hearing aids.
  • the inputs to the system are given by two microphones which, with the present invention, can be situated very close to one another.
  • the present invention addresses the following problems:
  • teaching of the present invention can be extremely useful for interference cancellation, separation of one voice from a mixture of many voices ("cocktail party" problem), and for preprocessing sound mixtures for noise reduction in order to allow further processing of a desired sound signal. x . All such changes, modifications, variations and other uses and applications which do not depart from the teachings herein are deemed to be covered by this patent, which is limited only by the claims which follow as interpreted in light of the foregoing description.

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  • Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
  • General Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
  • Neurosurgery (AREA)
  • Otolaryngology (AREA)
  • Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Acoustics & Sound (AREA)
  • Signal Processing (AREA)
  • Circuit For Audible Band Transducer (AREA)
EP99310611A 1998-12-30 1999-12-24 Blind source separation for hearing aids Revoked EP1017253B1 (en)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US22348598A 1998-12-30 1998-12-30
US223485 1998-12-30

Publications (3)

Publication Number Publication Date
EP1017253A2 EP1017253A2 (en) 2000-07-05
EP1017253A3 EP1017253A3 (en) 2003-03-26
EP1017253B1 true EP1017253B1 (en) 2012-10-31

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ID=22836713

Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
EP99310611A Revoked EP1017253B1 (en) 1998-12-30 1999-12-24 Blind source separation for hearing aids

Country Status (3)

Country Link
EP (1) EP1017253B1 (da)
CN (1) CN1261759A (da)
DK (1) DK1017253T3 (da)

Cited By (3)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP3849215A1 (en) 2020-01-10 2021-07-14 Sonova AG Dual wireless audio streams transmission allowing for spatial diversity or own voice pickup (ovpu)
US11083031B1 (en) 2020-01-10 2021-08-03 Sonova Ag Bluetooth audio exchange with transmission diversity
US11134349B1 (en) 2020-03-09 2021-09-28 International Business Machines Corporation Hearing assistance device with smart audio focus control

Families Citing this family (25)

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Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
DK1196009T3 (da) * 2000-10-04 2016-11-28 Widex As Høreapparat med adaptiv matching af input-transducere
US6741714B2 (en) * 2000-10-04 2004-05-25 Widex A/S Hearing aid with adaptive matching of input transducers
US7277554B2 (en) * 2001-08-08 2007-10-02 Gn Resound North America Corporation Dynamic range compression using digital frequency warping
AU2003206666A1 (en) * 2002-01-12 2003-07-24 Oticon A/S Wind noise insensitive hearing aid
US6711528B2 (en) * 2002-04-22 2004-03-23 Harris Corporation Blind source separation utilizing a spatial fourth order cumulant matrix pencil
ATE373940T1 (de) * 2002-12-20 2007-10-15 Oticon As Mikrofonsystem mit richtansprechverhalten
ATE324763T1 (de) 2003-08-21 2006-05-15 Bernafon Ag Verfahren zur verarbeitung von audiosignalen
ATE402586T1 (de) 2003-09-19 2008-08-15 Widex As Verfahren zur steuerung der richtcharakteristik eines hörgeräts und signalverarbeitungsvorrichtung für ein hörgerät mit steuerbarer richtcharakteristik
DE10351509B4 (de) 2003-11-05 2015-01-08 Siemens Audiologische Technik Gmbh Hörgerät und Verfahren zur Adaption eines Hörgeräts unter Berücksichtigung der Kopfposition
DE102005032274B4 (de) † 2005-07-11 2007-05-10 Siemens Audiologische Technik Gmbh Hörvorrichtung und entsprechendes Verfahren zur Eigenstimmendetektion
US8139787B2 (en) 2005-09-09 2012-03-20 Simon Haykin Method and device for binaural signal enhancement
DK2077059T3 (da) 2006-10-10 2017-11-27 Sivantos Gmbh Fremgangsmåde til drift af en hørehjælpeindretning samt en hørehjælpeindretning
DE102006047982A1 (de) 2006-10-10 2008-04-24 Siemens Audiologische Technik Gmbh Verfahren zum Betreiben einer Hörfilfe, sowie Hörhilfe
EP1912472A1 (de) * 2006-10-10 2008-04-16 Siemens Audiologische Technik GmbH Verfahren zum Betreiben einer Hörhilfe, sowie Hörhilfe
WO2008043758A1 (de) * 2006-10-10 2008-04-17 Siemens Audiologische Technik Gmbh Verfahren zum betreiben einer hörhilfe, sowie hörhilfe
DE102006047983A1 (de) * 2006-10-10 2008-04-24 Siemens Audiologische Technik Gmbh Verarbeitung eines Eingangssignals in einem Hörgerät
DE102006047986B4 (de) * 2006-10-10 2012-06-14 Siemens Audiologische Technik Gmbh Verarbeitung eines Eingangssignals in einem Hörgerät
US8767975B2 (en) 2007-06-21 2014-07-01 Bose Corporation Sound discrimination method and apparatus
US8611554B2 (en) * 2008-04-22 2013-12-17 Bose Corporation Hearing assistance apparatus
CN102428716B (zh) * 2009-06-17 2014-07-30 松下电器产业株式会社 助听器装置
DE102009043775A1 (de) 2009-09-30 2011-04-07 Siemens Medical Instruments Pte. Ltd. Verfahren zum Einstellen einer Hörvorrichtung anhand eines emotionalen Zustandes und entsprechende Hörvorrichtung
US9078077B2 (en) 2010-10-21 2015-07-07 Bose Corporation Estimation of synthetic audio prototypes with frequency-based input signal decomposition
CN103517941A (zh) 2011-05-06 2014-01-15 莱茵化学莱瑙有限公司 新颖的基于多羟基烷酸酯（pha）的持久水解稳定的生物基塑料、其生产方法及其用途
DE102016225207A1 (de) * 2016-12-15 2018-06-21 Sivantos Pte. Ltd. Verfahren zum Betrieb eines Hörgerätes
CN108597531B (zh) * 2018-03-28 2021-05-28 南京大学 一种通过多声源活动检测来改进双通道盲信号分离的方法

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Cited By (4)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP3849215A1 (en) 2020-01-10 2021-07-14 Sonova AG Dual wireless audio streams transmission allowing for spatial diversity or own voice pickup (ovpu)
US11083031B1 (en) 2020-01-10 2021-08-03 Sonova Ag Bluetooth audio exchange with transmission diversity
US11134350B2 (en) 2020-01-10 2021-09-28 Sonova Ag Dual wireless audio streams transmission allowing for spatial diversity or own voice pickup (OVPU)
US11134349B1 (en) 2020-03-09 2021-09-28 International Business Machines Corporation Hearing assistance device with smart audio focus control

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
CN1261759A (zh) 2000-08-02
DK1017253T3 (da) 2013-02-11
EP1017253A3 (en) 2003-03-26
EP1017253A2 (en) 2000-07-05

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