Directional Microphone Array for Hearing Aids

The long term objective of this research is to improve hearing aids in environments with noiseand reverberation. The approach is to develop a hearing aid accessory which makes traditional hearingaids much more sensitive to sounds coming from the look direction than to sounds coming from the sideand rear. A 3-microphone array with signal processing to produce a directional sensitivity in the lookdirection 10 to 12 db greater than broadside and rear directions has been devised. The plan will improvethe circuit and to build 6 experimental models. Clinical methods for determining the efficacy ofdirectional hearing aids will be devised. In Phase I the experimental models will be pilot tested withmoderate and severely hearing impaired subjects in a variety of signal and noise environments and theseresults will be used to design and implement full scale clinical trials in Phase II.