Extension of the two-microphone noise reduction method for binaural hearing aids

Abstract

Noise reduction is one of the most crucial functions, if not the most, in hearing aids, as hearing impaired people have great difficulty in understanding speech in noisy environments. In the past, we proposed a two-microphone noise reduction system with one-channel output. In this paper, we further extend this previously proposed noise reduction method for hearing aids application by applying the same noise reduction mechanism to the two channels, producing the binaural output signals which are expected to preserve the binaural benefits giving birth to listenerpsilas own "binaural gain". The experimental results in various acoustic environments demonstrate its superiority in suppressing interfering signals in comparison of traditional noise reduction algorithms, followed by the discussion on its ability in preserving the ability of sound source localization.