• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.121-128
• /
• 2015

In this paper, we introduce our smart phone application for hearing impaired people. Unlike previous hearing aids application, our application has both functions of self hearing tests and sound amplification. We provide user with two types of self hearing test, those are standard hearing test and detail hearing test. Each test has different advantages like short test time and accurate test result, however both tests provide reliable result. Our hearing test allows that user can measure their hearing loss level according to the frequency. Sound amplification function provide proper fitting formula by using NAL-NL1, and it guarantees high speech intelligibility. Our application can also memorize user's fitting data at specific test condition. Therefore those who using our hearing aids application can easily reset their hearing aids / earphone properties periodically. Our application is advanced at the aspect of self fitting function that no other previous application did. So we are expecting these comfortable processes about fitting lead the number of hearing aids user to be increased.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.294-302
• /
• 2009

In this paper, the trend of technology and the business strategy on 'Hearing Aids' are investigated for the industry promotion of medical devices based on IT engineering from the 316 patents of 'Hearing Aids' registered in Korean Intellectual Property Office(KIPO). The classification of technology on 'Hearing Aids' is performed according to the IPC(International Patent Classification) code to and the core technology of 'Hearing Aids' As the results of classification of IPC code, the number of patents with IPC code 'H04R', 'H04B', 'H01M', and 'A61F' are 160, 46, 40, and 19 respectively. We found that the Digital technology and the Medical Transplants technology are come to the front of 'Hearing Aids' and the foreign 'Hearing Aids' companies are filed an application with the Korean Intellectual Property Office(KIPO) before their business.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.61-67
• /
• 2000

Recent progress in digital and VLSI technology has offered new possibility fer noticeable advance of hearing aids. Yet, environmental noise remains one of the major problems to hearing aid users. This paper describes results which speech recognition performance and speech discrimination performance was measured for listeners with sensorineural hearing loss, while listeners in speech-band noise. In addition, to ameliorate hearing-aided environments of hearing impaired listeners, environmental noise reduction using speech enhancement techniques are investigated as a front-end of conventional hearing aids. Speech enhancement techniques are implemented in a realtime system equipped with DSP board. The clinical test results suggest that the speech enhancement technique may work in synergy with gain functions fer the greater SNR improvement as the preprocessing algorithm of digital hearing aids.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.214-220
• /
• 2019

Hearing impaired people are apt to be in danger because they can't detect danger with sound. Hearing impaired people have less risk-detection ability than non-disabled people because of lack of hearing. There are many devices to help the hearing impaired, such as hearing aids. A hearing aids can be helpful, but it may not be available depending on the degree or type of hearing loss for example, to the hearing-impaired people with little remaining hearing of high frequencies, ordinary hearing aids are not very useful for understanding the high frequency consonants and it requires a high cost, from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. Also, it is difficult for the underprivileged, such as the low-income bracket and the elderly, to use them because they are difficult to manage. Therefore, this paper describes the development of low-cost wearable device to assistant a hearing-impaired people using Arduino. Also, it accepts values from switches or sensors and can control external electronic devices such as LEDs and motors to create objects that can interact with the environment. In this is paper, through sound sensors, the ambient sound was taken as an analogue value and transmitted to the aduino board, and the vibration motor was operated when the noise was generated, so that the user could be aware of the occurrence of danger.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.272-278
• /
• 2011

Recently, the performance of binaural hearing aids is rapidly improved with the technology advancement of wireless communication, digital signal processing, and integrated circuit design. However, the previous hearing aids developer platforms can't be applied to binaural hearing aids developing, because it has no consideration for wireless communication and binaural hearing control. Also, the previous developer platforms are not easy to use for the algorithm development, because programming languages are limited. In this paper, we designed and implemented the open platform board for binaural hearing aids developing. The designed board can be programmed by general programming language and can be used wireless communication module. In order to verify the designed open platform board, we used the volume control algorithm using two open platform board. As a result of experiment, we verified the performance of designed and implemented open platform board that was successfully operated the binaural hearing control and the wireless communication.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.178-184
• /
• 2014

Key components of implantable hearing aids are consist of an acoustic sensor that collect external sound by suppressing the body noise, a signal processor module for compensation algorithm of hearing loss, and a output transducer which has tiny size but have high efficiency, respectively. In the partial implantable hearing aids, technologies of transducer and signal processor are so matured that can be applied not too much difficulty. However, due to the difficulties in implantable acoustic sensor technology, such as minimization of masticatory sound and damage of sensor's membrane from external impact, practical use of fully implantable hearing aids have not successful so far. In this paper, we have proposed a novel implantable acoustic sensor which has trans-tympanic structure, and is verified that the proposed method can be very useful for fully implantable hearing aids by cadaveric experiments.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
• /
• v.1997 no.11
• /
• pp.83-86
• /
• 1997

To provide ameliorated aided environment to hearing impaired listeners, background noise reduction techniques are investigated as a front-end of conventional hearing aids, and their effects are tested in a subjective manner. Several speech enhancement schemes were implemented and preference tests or normal listeners are performed to select the best possible scheme or hearing impaired listeners. Results indicated that SDT scores without the speech enhancement scheme drop more sharply as SNR decreases than those with the speech enhancement techniques. SDT scores obtained or hearing impaired listeners with hearing aids showed large variability. However, all impaired listeners preferred noise suppressed sounds to unsuppressed ones.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.29 no.5C
• /
• pp.673-682
• /
• 2004

The adaptive beam-forming is promising approach for noise reduction in hearing aids. This approach has come in the focus of interest only recently, because of the availability of new and powerful digital signal processors. The adaptation U using usually a Least Mean Squares algorithm, updates the weight vector. In this Paper, we propose a fast wavelet based adaptive algorithm using variable step size algorithm which varies adaptive constant by the change of signal environment. We compared the performance of the proposed algorithm with the known adaptive algorithm using computer simulation of multi channel adaptive bemformer in hearing aids. As the result the proposed algorithm is suitable for adaptive signal processing area using hearing aids and has advantages reducing computational complexity. And we show the beam-forming system using proposed algorithm converges stably in a sudden change of system environment.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.169-178
• /
• 2009

In this study, we suggest Korean nonlinear fitting formula (KNFF) to maximize speech intelligibility for digital hearing aids based on NAL-NL1 (NAL-nonlinear, version 1). KNFF was derived from the same procedure which is used for deriving NAL-NL1. KNFF consider the long-term average speech spectrum of Korean instead of English because the frequency characteristic of Korean is different from that of English. New insertion gains of KNFF were derived using the SII (speech intelligibility index) program provided by ANSI. In addition, the insertion gains were modified to maximize the intelligibility of high frequency words. To verify effect of the new fitting gain, we performed speech discrimination test (SDT) and preference test using the hearing loss simulator from NOISH. In the SDT, a word set as test material consists of 50 1-syllable word generally used in hearing clinic. As a result of the test, in case of moderate hearing loss with severe loss on high frequency, the SDT scores of KNFF was more improved about 3.2% than NAL-NLl and about 6% in case of the sever hearing loss. Finally we have obtained the result that it was the effective way to increase gain of mid-high frequency bands and to decrease gain of low frequency bands in order to maximize speech intelligibility of Korean.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.3 no.1
• /
• pp.117-123
• /
• 2011

Most individuals with hearing impairment have difficulty in understanding speech in noisy situations. This study was conducted to investigate sentence recognition ability using the Korean Standard-Sentence Lists for Preschoolers (KS-SL-P2) in pre-school age children with cochlear implants and hearing aids. The subjects of this study were 10 pre-school age children with hearing aids, 12 pre-school age children with cochlear implants, and 10 pre-school age children with normal hearing. Three kinds of signal-to-noise (SNR) conditions (+10 dB, +5 dB, 0 dB) were applied. The results for all pre-school age children with cochlear implants and hearing aids presented a significant increase in the score for sentence recognition as SNR increased. The sentence recognition score in speech noise were obtained with the SNR +10 dB. Significant differences existed between groups in terms of their sentence recognition ability, with the cochlear implant group performing better than the hearing aid group. These findings suggest the presence of a sentence recognition test using speech noise is useful for evaluating pre-school age children's listening skill.