Modeling and Simulation of Frequency Response Masking FIR Filter Bank using Approximate Multiplier for Hearing Aid Application

Abstract

The tremendous increase in the use of portable electronic devices is due to the development in the fields of signal processing and electronic technology. These battery operated devices needs reduction in power consumption with increased performance and long battery life. Since CMOS technology scaling fast approaches its physical limit of minimum supply voltage and smaller feature size, the hardware designer has to opt for new multiplier architectures for achieving low power and high speed performance. This paper proposes an area and power efficient approximate multiplier architecture. The error metrics are estimated to verify its performance advantage over other approximate multipliers. Using Frequency Response masking approach, a 6-band non-uniform digital FIR filter bank is developed using approximate multiplier for hearing aid application. Audiogram matching is done with audiograms of two different types of hearing losses and the matching error is computed. Simulation results show that the audiogram matching error falls within +/- 4 dB range.