Paper
17 April 2006 4D time-frequency representation for binaural speech signal processing
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Hearing is the ability to detect and process auditory information produced by the vibrating hair cilia residing in the corti of the ears to the auditory cortex of the brain via the auditory nerve. The primary and secondary corti of the brain interact with one another to distinguish and correlate the received information by distinguishing the varying spectrum of arriving frequencies. Binaural hearing is nature's way of employing the power inherent in working in pairs to process information, enhance sound perception, and reduce undesired noise. One ear might play a prominent role in sound recognition, while the other reinforces their perceived mutual information. Developing binaural hearing aid devices can be crucial in emulating the working powers of two ears and may be a step closer to significantly alleviating hearing loss of the inner ear. This can be accomplished by combining current speech research to already existing technologies such as RF communication between PDAs and Bluetooth. Ear Level Instrument (ELI) developed by Micro-tech Hearing Instruments and Starkey Laboratories is a good example of a digital bi-directional signal communicating between a PDA/mobile phone and Bluetooth. The agreement and disagreement of arriving auditory information to the Bluetooth device can be classified as sound and noise, respectively. Finding common features of arriving sound using a four coordinate system for sound analysis (four dimensional time-frequency representation), noise can be greatly reduced and hearing aids would become more efficient. Techniques developed by Szu within an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Blind Source Separation (BSS), Adaptive Wavelets Transform (AWT), and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) hold many possibilities to the improvement of acoustic segmentation of phoneme, all of which will be discussed in this paper. Transmitted and perceived acoustic speech signal will improve, as the binaural hearing aid will emulate two ears in sound localization, speech understanding in noisy environment, and loudness differentiation.
© (2006) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Raed Mikhael and Harold H. Szu "4D time-frequency representation for binaural speech signal processing", Proc. SPIE 6247, Independent Component Analyses, Wavelets, Unsupervised Smart Sensors, and Neural Networks IV, 62470V (17 April 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.668690
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KEYWORDS
Ear

Signal processing

Time-frequency analysis

Wavelets

Independent component analysis

Personal digital assistants

Acoustics

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