EP2982136A1 - Procédé d'estimation d'un signal utile et dispositif auditif - Google Patents

Procédé d'estimation d'un signal utile et dispositif auditif

Info

Publication number
EP2982136A1
EP2982136A1 EP14710644.7A EP14710644A EP2982136A1 EP 2982136 A1 EP2982136 A1 EP 2982136A1 EP 14710644 A EP14710644 A EP 14710644A EP 2982136 A1 EP2982136 A1 EP 2982136A1
Authority
EP
European Patent Office
Prior art keywords
microphone
signal
signal vector
reference signal
vector
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Granted
Application number
EP14710644.7A
Other languages
German (de)
English (en)
Other versions
EP2982136B1 (fr
Inventor
Walter Kellermann
Klaus Reindl
Yuanhang Zheng
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
Sivantos Pte Ltd
Original Assignee
Sivantos Pte Ltd
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Family has litigation
First worldwide family litigation filed litigation Critical https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=50288202&utm_source=google_patent&utm_medium=platform_link&utm_campaign=public_patent_search&patent=EP2982136(A1) "Global patent litigation dataset” by Darts-ip is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Application filed by Sivantos Pte Ltd filed Critical Sivantos Pte Ltd
Publication of EP2982136A1 publication Critical patent/EP2982136A1/fr
Application granted granted Critical
Publication of EP2982136B1 publication Critical patent/EP2982136B1/fr
Revoked legal-status Critical Current
Anticipated expiration legal-status Critical

Links

Classifications

    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04R—LOUDSPEAKERS, MICROPHONES, GRAMOPHONE PICK-UPS OR LIKE ACOUSTIC ELECTROMECHANICAL TRANSDUCERS; DEAF-AID SETS; PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS
    • H04R25/00—Deaf-aid sets, i.e. electro-acoustic or electro-mechanical hearing aids; Electric tinnitus maskers providing an auditory perception
    • H04R25/43—Electronic input selection or mixing based on input signal analysis, e.g. mixing or selection between microphone and telecoil or between microphones with different directivity characteristics
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04R—LOUDSPEAKERS, MICROPHONES, GRAMOPHONE PICK-UPS OR LIKE ACOUSTIC ELECTROMECHANICAL TRANSDUCERS; DEAF-AID SETS; PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS
    • H04R25/00—Deaf-aid sets, i.e. electro-acoustic or electro-mechanical hearing aids; Electric tinnitus maskers providing an auditory perception
    • H04R25/40—Arrangements for obtaining a desired directivity characteristic
    • H04R25/407—Circuits for combining signals of a plurality of transducers
    • G—PHYSICS
    • G10—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS; ACOUSTICS
    • G10L—SPEECH ANALYSIS OR SYNTHESIS; SPEECH RECOGNITION; SPEECH OR VOICE PROCESSING; SPEECH OR AUDIO CODING OR DECODING
    • G10L21/00—Processing of the speech or voice signal to produce another audible or non-audible signal, e.g. visual or tactile, in order to modify its quality or its intelligibility
    • G10L21/02—Speech enhancement, e.g. noise reduction or echo cancellation
    • G10L21/0208—Noise filtering
    • G10L21/0216—Noise filtering characterised by the method used for estimating noise
    • G10L2021/02161—Number of inputs available containing the signal or the noise to be suppressed
    • G10L2021/02165—Two microphones, one receiving mainly the noise signal and the other one mainly the speech signal
    • G—PHYSICS
    • G10—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS; ACOUSTICS
    • G10L—SPEECH ANALYSIS OR SYNTHESIS; SPEECH RECOGNITION; SPEECH OR VOICE PROCESSING; SPEECH OR AUDIO CODING OR DECODING
    • G10L21/00—Processing of the speech or voice signal to produce another audible or non-audible signal, e.g. visual or tactile, in order to modify its quality or its intelligibility
    • G10L21/02—Speech enhancement, e.g. noise reduction or echo cancellation
    • G10L21/0208—Noise filtering
    • G10L21/0216—Noise filtering characterised by the method used for estimating noise
    • G10L2021/02168—Noise filtering characterised by the method used for estimating noise the estimation exclusively taking place during speech pauses
    • H—ELECTRICITY
    • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
    • H04R—LOUDSPEAKERS, MICROPHONES, GRAMOPHONE PICK-UPS OR LIKE ACOUSTIC ELECTROMECHANICAL TRANSDUCERS; DEAF-AID SETS; PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS
    • H04R2460/00—Details of hearing devices, i.e. of ear- or headphones covered by H04R1/10 or H04R5/033 but not provided for in any of their subgroups, or of hearing aids covered by H04R25/00 but not provided for in any of its subgroups
    • H04R2460/01—Hearing devices using active noise cancellation

Definitions

  • the present invention relates to a method for estimating a useful signal of a hearing device by obtaining at least two microphone signals from a sound signal, obtaining a residual signal from the microphone signals, in which a portion of the microphone signals is blocked from a predeterminable direction, and Filtering the microphone signals with a filter, whereby an estimate of the useful signal is obtained.
  • the present invention relates to a hearing device with a corresponding microphone device, blocking device and a filter.
  • a hearing device here means any device which can be worn in or on the ear and produces a sound-stimulating device, in particular a hearing device, a headset, headphones and the like.
  • Hearing aids are portable hearing aids that are used to care for the hearing impaired. To the numerous individual
  • hearing aids such as behind-the-ear hearing aids (BTE), hearing aid with external receiver (RIC: receiver in the canal) and in-the-ear hearing aids (IDO), e.g. also Concha hearing aids or channel hearing aids (ITE, CIC), provided.
  • BTE behind-the-ear hearing aids
  • RIC hearing aid with external receiver
  • IDO in-the-ear hearing aids
  • ITE Concha hearing aids or channel hearing aids
  • CIC channel hearing aids
  • the hearing aids listed by way of example are worn on the outer ear or in the ear canal.
  • bone conduction hearing aids, implantable or vibrotactile hearing aids are also available on the market. The stimulation of the damaged hearing takes place either mechanically or electrically.
  • Hearing aids have in principle as essential components an input transducer, an amplifier and an output transducer.
  • the input transducer is usually a sound receiver, z. As a microphone, and / or an electromagnetic receiver, for. B. an induction coil.
  • the output transducer is usually used as an electroacoustic transducer, z. As miniature speaker, or as an electromechanical transducer, z. B. Kno- chen effets Anlagener, realized.
  • the amplifier is usually integrated in a signal processing unit. This basic structure is shown in FIG. 1 using the example of a behind-the-ear hearing device. In a hearing aid housing 1 for carrying behind the ear, one or more microphones 2 for receiving the sound from the environment are installed.
  • a signal processing unit 3 which is also integrated in the hearing aid housing 1, processes the microphone signals and amplifies them.
  • the output signal of the signal processing unit 3 is transmitted to a loudspeaker or earpiece 4, which outputs an acoustic signal.
  • the sound is optionally transmitted via a sound tube, which is fixed with an earmold in the ear canal, to the eardrum of the device carrier.
  • the power supply of the hearing device and in particular the signal processing unit 3 is effected by a likewise integrated into the hearing aid housing 1 battery. 5
  • a particular challenge when using a hearing aid or another hearing device is its use in a so-called cafeteria scenario.
  • the wearer of the hearing device or the hearing device converses with a conversation partner.
  • the acoustic environment is further characterized by other people speaking as well as undefined background noise.
  • the interference signal or noise consists of background noise and / or interference speech components or interferences.
  • second order statistic quantities in particular power spectral density PSD
  • these components are estimated during the target speech pauses.
  • the spurious components must be timed out. be stationary so that the estimate obtained is valid even if the target speaker is active again after a certain pause.
  • the interfering signals are not always stationary. Therefore, effective multichannel noise reduction techniques are limited in their application, as they are used in non-stationary signal scenarios (e.g.
  • VAD Target Voice Activity Detection
  • the object of the present invention is therefore to provide a method for estimating a useful signal of a hearing device, which can also be used with non-stationary signals, such as speech.
  • a corresponding hearing device is to be provided.
  • this object is achieved by a method for estimating a useful signal of a hearing device - Obtaining at least two microphone signals from each a sound signal, wherein the microphone signals a
  • Microphone signal vector in which reference signal vector on
  • Proportion of microphone signals is blocked from a predeterminable direction
  • the invention provides a hearing device
  • a microphone device for obtaining at least two microphone signals from each a sound signal, wherein the
  • Microphone signals form a microphone signal vector
  • a blocking device for obtaining a reference signal vector from the microphone signal vector, in which reference signal vector a portion of the microphone signals is blocked from a predeterminable direction
  • the reference signal vector can also be one-dimensional, ie consist of a single reference signal. As a rule, however, it will consist of several reference signals.
  • a coherence variable and in particular a coherence matrix is obtained from the reference signal vector, ie from portions of the residual signal, from which a power density variable, and in particular a power density matrix, of the residual signal (ie the noise components) can be determined.
  • the filter is parameterized so that a specific useful signal source can be filtered out or estimated from the microphone signals or the microphone signal vector.
  • the proposed concept can also be used to estimate spectral power densities of noise components for non-stationary signals (eg speech), so that multi-channel noise reduction techniques can be applied or implemented in virtually any scenario.
  • the specifiable direction of the useful signal is determined from
  • each useful signal component of each microphone signal can be matched with one another and subsequently subtracted from one another. This allows the signal channels (one channel for a microphone or a microphone signal) effectively from target or
  • the wanted signal components are matched to one another both with regard to the delay and with regard to their spectra.
  • the wanted signal components can be almost completely removed from the signal channels.
  • the power density based control can be provided to the filter on the basis of the coherence quantity and the reference signal vector.
  • the useful signal may in particular be a voice signal.
  • the method according to the invention or the hearing device according to the invention can be used in particular to increase speech intelligibility.
  • the reference signal vector may comprise speech signal components which are not part of the useful signal.
  • the reference signal vector includes, for example, speech portions of speakers different from the target speaker.
  • FIG. 1 shows the basic structure of a hearing device according to the prior art
  • the block diagram shown in FIG. 2 represents a method which can be implemented in a hearing device according to FIG. 1 or in another hearing device.
  • the blocks illustrated in FIG. 2 may represent corresponding devices of a hearing device.
  • An exemplary hearing device or an exemplary hearing device comprises a sensor or microphone arrangement with at least two sensors or two microphones Ml, Mp. The following is always spoken representative of microphones.
  • Each microphone Ml, Mp converts the respective sound signal into a corresponding microphone signal.
  • the sound signals are components of a sound field, which represents the acoustic situation of a hearing aid wearer, for example. Such a typical situation would be that of a "cafeteria scenario" in which the hearing aid wearer is talking to a talker, one or more other people are talking in the background, and other background noise is present, but there may also be another acoustic situation in which non-stationary noise is present.
  • the microphone signals, which together form a microphone signal vector x are each further processed in separate channels, ie, a microphone signal is processed in each channel.This multichannel processing is represented by thick arrows in FIG 2.
  • the microphone signal vector x becomes a multichannel system 10 in FIG Source localization unit LOC (source localization) fed in. This wins from the
  • Microphone signal vector x position data q of a source Sq is determined in three-dimensional space or simply as angle or angle and distance.
  • This position information q is used as coarse reference information for creating a blocking matrix BM.
  • a blocking matrix BM With the aid of the blocking matrix BM, those components which originate from the spatial region of the useful signal source are spatially hidden from the microphone signals or the microphone signal vector x.
  • Such a blocking matrix BM can for example be based on a reactive blind source separation algorithm, as described in Y. Zheng, K. Reindl, and W.
  • a multichannel reference signal or a reference signal vector n results from the microphone signal vector x. If the signals are subtracted, for example, in pairs in the blocking matrix, the number of signals of the multidimensional reference signal vector n can be half the number of microphone signals or . -channels correspond. With odd number of
  • Microphone signals are preferably rounded up.
  • the reference signal vector is thus usually a multidimensional vector of several individual signals.
  • the reference signal vector n is supplied to a coherence estimation unit COH together with the microphone signal vector x, which consists of the individual microphone signals. It estimates a coherence matrix ⁇ from the two vectors n and x.
  • the coherence matrix ⁇ is supplied to a PSD estimation unit PSD.
  • PSD PSD estimation unit
  • the PSD estimator estimates from the coherence matrix ⁇ and the reference vector n a multidimensional power density estimate S, for example as described in I. McCowan and H. Bourlard, "Microphone array postfilter for diffuse noise field," in IEEE International conf. Acoustics, Speech, Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2002, pp. 905-908, or in K. Reindl.
  • a Multi-Channel Filter FILT estimates filter parameters from the power density estimation variable S. These are stored in the filter FILT on the microphone signals or on the microphone signal vector x applied, resulting in the estimated signal s q for the particular user source or the useful signal.
  • an estimation of a non-stationary second order statistic quantity concerning interference components can be achieved by means of PSD, by making use of the coherence of the corresponding interference components.
  • the target speech components can first be equated in all channels (delay compensation and spectral matching) so that almost identical target speech components are contained in the available channels.
  • a directional blind-source separation algorithm of the type mentioned above can be used.
  • the spurious signal coherence matrix can be estimated, which in turn is used to estimate the spurious PSD matrix S.
  • To estimate the useful signal according to the invention therefore requires no limitations of the temporal signal characteristics.
  • the present invention utilizes that the respective acoustic scenario is spatially stationary to estimate the noise PSD matrix. It can be assumed that the spatial domain is sufficiently stationary for any scenarios, in contrast to the temporal domain. This is because the changes in the coherence function mainly depend on the spatial characteristics, i. from the geometric arrangement of the sources and objects in the acoustic scene. The changes in the coherence function, on the other hand, are only slightly dependent on the temporal properties of the signals.
  • the method according to the invention or the hearing device according to the invention is not limited to specific scenarios relating to temporally stationary noise. Accordingly, the inventive concept makes powerful, multichannel noise reduction techniques for any scenarios in which disturbance ⁇
  • Noise suppression is necessary, usable or realizable.
  • An essential component of the invention is therefore based on the knowledge to separate the estimation of the spatial coherence of interference signals from the estimation of the temporal statistics quantities of the second order (PSD of the noise components).
  • the space-time coherence matrices can also be continuously estimated for scenarios with (temporally) transient speech signals.
  • a multi-channel Wiener filter can be used as the filter.
  • a single-channel filter can also be used. Such filtering can be used for example in noise suppression in a binaural hearing aid.
  • the PSD noise estimate along with the multi-channel Wiener filter can be implemented in conjunction with a polyphase filter bank typically used in hearing aids.
  • the concept according to the invention can be realized on the basis of a SIR / SINR amplification (signal to interference ratio / signal to interference and noise ratio).
  • SIR / SINR amplification signal to interference ratio / signal to interference and noise ratio
  • an ideal blind source separation scheme is assumed for the calculation, i. the target language components are roughly the same in all available channels.
  • an ideal block-based voice activity detection (VAD) can be used in this case to estimate the noise coherence matrix.
  • VAD block-based voice activity detection

Abstract

L'invention concerne un procédé performant servant à l'estimation d'un signal utile d'un dispositif auditif et, en particulier, d'un appareil auditif par exemple pour la réduction de parasites. Pour cela, le procédé de la présente invention consiste à acquérir au moins deux signaux de microphone composés respectivement d'un signal de bruit et d'un signal de référence (n) parmi les signaux de microphone (x), une partie des signaux de microphone (x) en provenance d'une direction définissable au préalable étant bloqués. Les signaux de microphone sont filtrés par un filtre (FILT) à la sortie duquel on obtient un signal d'estimation (S~q). Pour cela, on détermine d'après des parties du signal de référence (n) une grandeur de cohérence (Γ) et d'après la grandeur de cohérence une grandeur de densité de puissance (S). Le filtre est paramétré à l'aide de la grandeur de densité de puissance (S).
EP14710644.7A 2013-04-02 2014-02-27 Procédé d'estimation d'un signal utile et dispositif auditif Revoked EP2982136B1 (fr)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
DE102013205790.3A DE102013205790B4 (de) 2013-04-02 2013-04-02 Verfahren zum Schätzen eines Nutzsignals und Hörvorrichtung
PCT/IB2014/059290 WO2014162214A1 (fr) 2013-04-02 2014-02-27 Procédé d'estimation d'un signal utile et dispositif auditif

Publications (2)

Publication Number Publication Date
EP2982136A1 true EP2982136A1 (fr) 2016-02-10
EP2982136B1 EP2982136B1 (fr) 2018-06-13

Family

ID=50288202

Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
EP14710644.7A Revoked EP2982136B1 (fr) 2013-04-02 2014-02-27 Procédé d'estimation d'un signal utile et dispositif auditif

Country Status (5)

Country Link
US (1) US9736599B2 (fr)
EP (1) EP2982136B1 (fr)
DE (1) DE102013205790B4 (fr)
DK (1) DK2982136T3 (fr)
WO (1) WO2014162214A1 (fr)

Cited By (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP2982136B1 (fr) 2013-04-02 2018-06-13 Sivantos Pte. Ltd. Procédé d'estimation d'un signal utile et dispositif auditif

Families Citing this family (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
CN113380266B (zh) * 2021-05-28 2022-06-28 中国电子科技集团公司第三研究所 一种微型双麦克风语音增强方法及微型双麦克风

Family Cites Families (6)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
KR100856246B1 (ko) * 2007-02-07 2008-09-03 삼성전자주식회사 실제 잡음 환경의 특성을 반영한 빔포밍 장치 및 방법
DE602008002695D1 (de) * 2008-01-17 2010-11-04 Harman Becker Automotive Sys Postfilter für einen Strahlformer in der Sprachverarbeitung
EP2196988B1 (fr) * 2008-12-12 2012-09-05 Nuance Communications, Inc. Détermination de la cohérence de signaux audio
DK2395506T3 (da) * 2010-06-09 2012-09-10 Siemens Medical Instr Pte Ltd Fremgangsmåde og system til behandling af akustisk signal til undertrykkelse af interferens og støj i binaurale mikrofonkonfigurationer
DK2701145T3 (en) 2012-08-24 2017-01-16 Retune DSP ApS Noise cancellation for use with noise reduction and echo cancellation in personal communication
DE102013205790B4 (de) 2013-04-02 2017-07-06 Sivantos Pte. Ltd. Verfahren zum Schätzen eines Nutzsignals und Hörvorrichtung

Cited By (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
EP2982136B1 (fr) 2013-04-02 2018-06-13 Sivantos Pte. Ltd. Procédé d'estimation d'un signal utile et dispositif auditif

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
EP2982136B1 (fr) 2018-06-13
US9736599B2 (en) 2017-08-15
DE102013205790B4 (de) 2017-07-06
DK2982136T3 (da) 2018-09-24
US20160029130A1 (en) 2016-01-28
DE102013205790A1 (de) 2014-10-02
WO2014162214A1 (fr) 2014-10-09

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