Improving Signal-to-Noise in Military Boom-Mounted Microphones

Communication is critical for the warfighter. However, aircrew and aircraft maintainers operate in noisy environments where communication is very challenging. One challenge is the noise picked up by the boom microphone when a talker is in these noise environments. The noise can make it difficult to understand the speech, which increases the workload on the listener, increasing their fatigue and risking their mission effectiveness. Creare proposes to develop its ìBetter Boomî system as a solution to reducing noise and improving the quality and intelligibility of noisy speech. Better Boom deploys state-of-the-art de-noising algorithms into a small, in-line processing module that is easily compatible with aircrew tasks, whether seated or mobile within the aircraft. With Better Boom, speech intelligibility is improved, cognitive workload and fatigue are reduced, and mission effectiveness is increased.