Manikin and cochlear implant patient test results with a portable adaptive beamforming processor to suppress the effects of noise

Abstract

A simple adaptive beamformer (ABF) was implemented in a real-time portable speech processor and tested with four cochlear implant patients. The ABF algorithm used signals from only two microphones - one behind each ear - to attenuate sounds not arriving from the direction directly in front of the patient, and was compared with a strategy in which the two microphone signals were simply added together (two-microphone broadside strategy). Tests with the four patients were conducted in quiet and in noise. Results at a 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio showed large improvements in speech intelligibility for all patients, when compared to the two-microphone broadside strategy. Physical measurement of the directional characteristics of the ABF processor were made with a Kemar manikin. The effects of reverberation were explored by placing the manikin in different acoustic environments and observing the attenuation of the noise alone at various angles. A near-anechoic environment allowed the noise to be attenuated by as much as 21 dB, whereas in a highly reverberant concrete stairwell, the ABF processor was unable to provide any directional gain beyond about 3 dB.