HIGH-PRESENCEHEARING-AIDSYSTEM

Real-time two-stage blind source separation (BSS) method forconvolutive mixtures ofspeech isnowbeing studied bytheauthors, inwhichasingle-input multiple-output (SIMO)-model-based independent component analysis (ICA) andaSIMO-model-based binary masking arecombined. Inaddition, wehavedeveloped apocket-size real-time DSPmodule implementing thetwo-stage BSSmethod. In this paper, weintroduce ahigh-presence hearing-aid system which canreduce theinterference soundandreproduce thetarget sound while keeping thedirectivity, andrealize thesystem withtherealtimeBSSmodule. Toevaluate it, wecarried outtheobjective and subjective experiments using 9users. Fromthese results, itisrevealed that thedecomposition performance andthedirectivity maintenance oftheproposed system aresuperior tothose ofconventional methods. IndexTerms-Hearing aids, Realtimesystems, Userinterfaces, Digital signal processors