Reconfigurable Filter Bank Design Techniques for Hearing Aid Performance Improvement

Abstract

Hearing is one of the most crucial sense for human beings as it connects them to external world. Hearing loss impairs communication which is an essential human function. Hearing disability has massive negative impact on life, work, physical and emotional well-being as well as relationships and is rated as the third most common health problem affecting relations and quality of life. Hearing aid devices can selectively intensify sound signals in order to suit the hearing characteristics of the patients and is a boon for people with hearing misfortune. However, there is a huge gap between the potential and actual hearing aid users. This work provides a critical look into the various challenges posed by hearing aid users, the comparative of the existing state-of-art hearing devices and throws light on bottlenecks in hearing aid design and performance. Filter bank, being the holy grail of Digital Hearing aid, needs special attention for improving the hearing aid performance. Reconfigurability is the need of the hour for providing flexible and tailormade hearing aids that can suit individual hearing requirements. The paper discusses and gives an in-depth insight into the techniques for reconfigurable Filter bank design for performance augmentationin terms of parameters like Signal quality, Auditory compensation, Computational and Hardware complexity, area, speed, power, etc.