An individualized super Gaussian single microphone Speech Enhancement for hearing aid users with smartphone as an assistive device
This work addresses speech enhancement for hearing aid users in noisy environments, but it is incremental as it builds on existing single microphone methods with added customization.
The authors tackled speech enhancement for hearing aid users by deriving a new super Gaussian Joint Maximum a Posteriori gain function implemented on a smartphone, allowing real-time customization of noise suppression and speech distortion; objective and subjective results showed effectiveness in noisy conditions at 0 dB and 5 dB SNR.
In this letter, we derive a new super Gaussian Joint Maximum a Posteriori based single microphone speech enhancement gain function. The developed Speech Enhancement method is implemented on a smartphone, and this arrangement functions as an assistive device to hearing aids. We introduce a tradeoff parameter in the derived gain function that allows the smartphone user to customize their listening preference, by controlling the amount of noise suppression and speech distortion in real-time based on their level of hearing comfort perceived in noisy real world acoustic environment. Objective quality and intelligibility measures show the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison to benchmark techniques considered in this paper. Subjective results reflect the usefulness of the developed Speech Enhancement application in real-world noisy conditions at signal to noise ratio levels of 0 dB and 5 dB.