Proposed noise pollution protection device

Abstract

Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is one of the vital etiologies of human deafness at global level. Hearing protection device (HPD) is worn to reduce the level of sound transmitted to the inner ear. There are sounds we want to hear clearly even in noisy environments like warning signals, alarms, voices of co-workers, even machinery sounds in industries. There's a wide variety of types of conventional HPDs available, including ear muffs, foam and preformed ear plugs, and canal caps. These devices may not provide adequate attenuation depending on frequency where as there are many instances during which they may provide heavy attenuation to the incoming sound. Applications for active noise reduction and sound transmission, frequency selectivity, amplitude sensitivity, adjustable attenuation as well as uniform attenuation features in N.P.P.D. are desirable. In the presented paper, an electronic noise pollution protection device (N.P.P.D.) is proposed to incorporate the desirable features apart from active noise reduction technique.