Oticon A/s

Adel Zahedi

Michael Syskind Pedersen

Jesper Bruun Jensen

Lars Bramsløw

Thomas Ulrich Christiansen

A hearing device adapted for being worn at or in an ear of a user, comprises a) an input unit comprising at last two input transducers each for converting sound around said hearing device to an electric input signal representing said sound, thereby providing at least two electric input signals; b) a beamformer filter comprising a minimum processing beamformer defined by optimized beamformer weights, the beamformer filter being configured to provide a filtered signal in dependence of said at least two electric input signals and said optimized beamformer weights; c) a reference signal representing sound around said hearing device; d) a performance criterion for said minimum processing beamformer. The minimum processing beamformer is a beamformer that provides the filtered signal with as little modification as possible in terms of a selected distance measure compared to said reference signal, while still fulfilling said performance criterion. The optimized beamformer weights are adaptively determined in dependence of said at least two electric input signals, said reference signal, said distance measure, and said performance criterion. A method of operating a hearing device is further disclosed. The invention may e.g. be used in hearing aids or headsets.

Hearing device with minimum processing beamformer

A hearing aid comprises a) a multitude of M input transducers each providing an electric input signal representative of environment sound in a time-frequency representation (k, l), and each comprise varying amounts of target (s) and noise (v) signal components; b) a signal processor configured to process said multitude of electric input signals; and comprising a beamformer filter configured to receive said multitude M of electric input signals and to provide a spatially filtered signal and a post-filter configured to receive said spatially filtered signal and to provide an estimate &#x15c;(k,l) of a target signal representing said target signal components from said target sound source. The signal processor is configured to provide estimates of power spectral densities &#x3bb;(k,l) of said target signal components in dependence of inter-frequency bin relationships between the spectral components enforced by properties of the electric input signals across at least some of said frequency bins.

Hearing aid comprising a noise reduction system

The application relates to a hearing device, e.g. a hearing aid, adapted for being worn by a user and for receiving sound from the environment of the user to process the sound with a view to the user's intelligibility of speech in said sound, wherein an estimate of the user's intelligibility of speech in said sound being defined by a speech intelligibility measure I of said sound at a current point in time t, the hearing device comprising a) an input unit for providing a number of electric input signals y, each representing said sound in the environment of the user, b) a signal processor for processing said number of electric input signals y according to a configurable parameter setting &#x398; of one or more processing algorithms, which when applied to said number of electric input signals y provides a processed signal y(&#x398;) in dependence thereof, the signal processor being configured to provide a resulting signal y, c) a controller configured to control the processor to provide said resulting signal yat a current point in time t in dependence of c1) a parameter set &#x3a6; defining a hearing profile of the user, c2) said electric input signal(s) y or characteristics extracted from said electric input signal(s), e.g. a noise covariance matrix Cand/or covariance matrix Cof noisy signals, c3) a current value I(y) of said speech intelligibility measure I for at least one of said electric input signals y, c4) a desired value Ides of said speech intelligibility measure, c5) a first parameter setting &#x398;1 of said one or more processing algorithms, c6) a current value I(y(&#x398;1)) of said speech intelligibility measure I for a first processed signal y(&#x398;1) based on said first parameter setting &#x398;1, and c7) a second parameter setting &#x398;' of said one or more processing algorithms, which, when applied to said number of electric input signals y, provides a second processed signal y(&#x398;&#x2032;) exhibiting said desired value Iof said speech intelligibility measure. The application further relates to a method of operating a hearing device. The invention may e.g. be used in hearing aid systems, or other portable audio processing systems.

Growing community of inventors

Smørum, Denmark

Adel Zahedi