ROBUST ACOUSTIC SOURCE LOCALIZATION FOR DIGITAL HEARING AIDS IN NOISE AND REVERBERANT ENVIRONMENT

A new method in digital hearing aids to adaptively localize the speech source in noise and reverberant environment is proposed. Based on the room reverberant model and the multichannel adaptive eigenvalue decomposition （MCAED） algorithm, the proposed method can iteratively estimate impulse response coefficients between the speech source and microphones by the adaptive subgradient projection method. Then, it acquires the time delays of microphone pairs, and calculates the source position by the geometric method. Compared with the traditional normal least mean square （NLMS） algorithm, the adaptive subgradient projection method achieves faster and more accurate convergence in a low signal-to-noise ratio （SNR） environment. Simulations for glasses digital hearing aids with four-component square array demonstrate the robust performance of the proposed method.

Construction of a new adaptive wavelet network and its learning algorithm

A new adaptive learning algorithm for constructing and training wavelet networks is proposed based on the time-frequency localization properties of wavelet frames and the adaptive projection algorithm. The exponential convergence of the adaptive projection algorithm in finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces is constructively proved, with exponential decay ratios given with high accuracy. The learning algorithm can sufficiently utilize the time-frequency information contained in the training data, iteratively determines the number of the hidden layer nodes and the weights of wavelet networks, and solves the problem of structure optimization of wavelet networks. The algorithm is simple and efficient, as illustrated by examples of signal representation and denoising.

Nonparametric VSS-APA based on precise background noise power estimate

The adaptive algorithm used for echo cancellation(EC) system needs to provide 1) low misadjustment and 2) high convergence rate. The affine projection algorithm(APA) is a better alternative than normalized least mean square(NLMS) algorithm in EC applications where the input signal is highly correlated. Since the APA with a constant step-size has to make compromise between the performance criteria 1) and 2), a variable step-size APA(VSS-APA) provides a more reliable solution. A nonparametric VSS-APA(NPVSS-APA) is proposed by recovering the background noise within the error signal instead of cancelling the a posteriori errors. The most problematic term of its variable step-size formula is the value of background noise power(BNP). The power difference between the desired signal and output signal, which equals the power of error signal statistically, has been considered the BNP estimate in a rough manner. Considering that the error signal consists of background noise and misalignment noise, a precise BNP estimate is achieved by multiplying the rough estimate with a corrective factor. After the analysis on the power ratio of misalignment noise to background noise of APA, the corrective factor is formulated depending on the projection order and the latest value of variable step-size. The new algorithm which does not require any a priori knowledge of EC environment has the advantage of easier controllability in practical application. The simulation results in the EC context indicate the accuracy of the proposed BNP estimate and the more effective behavior of the proposed algorithm compared with other versions of APA class.