System architecture of a smart binaural hearing aid using a mobile computing platform

A smart binaural hearing aid device is proposed with the capability of applying advanced binaural DSP algorithms to the acoustic signals received from both ears. The acoustic signals from four microphones among which two microphones in the left ear and another two in the right ear are wirelessly transmitted to a smart-phone-based computing platform through a low-power, low-delay radio transceiver. With the powerful computing hardware and sufficient memory resources, the real-time DSP software is capable of analyzing and processing the 4-channel audio signals simultaneously to achieve enhanced gain compensation, directivity characteristic, noise reduction and feedback cancellation. The processed audio data is finally wirelessly transferred back to each ear to regenerate the acoustic signal to stimulate the user's ear drums.