Cochlear Limited

Gn Resound A/s

Jan Wouters

Tom Francart

Marc Moonen

Bas Van Dijk

Simon Doclo

Ann Spriet

Jeff Vanden Berghe

Aspects of the present invention are generally directed to a modulation enhancement strategy that helps improve ITD perception by explicitly modulating the electrical stimulation signal. In an embodiment, the timing of the applied modulations is based on amplitude inflections (i.e., peaks or troughs) in the received sound signal. In an embodiment, the identified inflections (i.e., peaks or troughs) represent the most energetic portions of the signal over a particular time period (e.g., the time period prior to the inflection having a length equal to the expected fundamental period of the signal. Further, in an embodiment, the cochlear implant applies a delay to the stimulation signal to help maintain interaural timing cues. The application of this delay helps account for the traveling wave delay in the acoustic path of the opposite ear in embodiments in which the opposite ear is fitted with a hearing aid or is not fitted with a hearing device.

Interaural time difference enhancement strategy

Disclosed is a method and system for allowing a recipient of a hearing aid device, and in one aspect, a bilateral hearing aid system, to locate the source of a sound signal about the recipient. The method uses localization cues in the sound signal and modifies these to provide useable localization cues to generate a stimulating signal for application to the recipient. In one example, a detected localization cue such as an interaural level difference (ILD) is transposed to a lower frequency.

Localisation in a bilateral hearing device system

In one aspect of the present invention, a method to reduce noise in a noisy speech signal is disclosed The method comprises: applying at least two versions of the noisy speech signal to a first filter, whereby that first filter outputs a speech reference signal and at least one noise reference signal, applying a filtering operation to each of the at least one noise reference signals, and subtracting from the speech reference signal each of the filtered noise reference signals, wherein the filtering operation is performed with filters having filter coefficients determined by taking into account speech leakage contributions in the at least one noise reference signal.

Method and device for noise reduction

A noise reduction system for a sound reproduction system, in particular for hearing aids, comprises a primary and a secondary microphone for producing input signals in response to sound in which a noise component is present. The system has a first signal processing section comprising a fixed filter and a summing function, wherein the first signal processing section has means for receiving signals from the microphones and producing a speech reference signal and a noise reference signal. A second signal processing section comprises an adaptive filter and an additional summing function, and the second signal processing section has means for receiving the speech and noise reference signals and producing an output signal with an improved signal-to-noise ratio.

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Holsbeek, Belgium

Jan Wouters