A Smart Binaural Hearing Aid Architecture Based on a Mobile Computing Platform

This paper presents a new structure for hearing aids. Normally, the power consumption and user experience are contradictory. The proposed hearing aid structure mainly consists of three parts: the earpieces, the mobile computing platform, and the real-time speech-enhancement application. It can run complex algorithms without carrying out heavy calculations on the processors in the hearing aid. Thus, the binaural algorithm is utilized without being limited by complexity and power consumption to improve the user experience. Moreover, the speech-enhancement algorithm can be updated much more easily than in traditional built-in digital signal process hearing aids. A good level of user experience is achieved by combining the hearing aid and mobile computing platform with a 400-MHz transceiver; furthermore, the 400-MHz transceiver can reduce path loss around the body. The concept verification process showed that the overall usage of the central processing unit in the smartphone is around 16%, the signal-to-noise ratios show at least a 30% improvement in some environments, and the whole system delay is 8.8 ms. The presented objective and subjective results show significant improvements regarding user experience and usability brought about by the proposed structure.