Abstract
Personal radio-communication devices are traditionally used with built-in or external air conduction microphones. Recently, there have been some efforts to use bone conduction microphones mounted on the operator’s head as a replacement for external air microphones. The goal of this study was to compare the intelligibility of speech transmitted through a boom-type noise-cancelling air microphone and a bone microphone using Thales multiband inter-intra-team radios. Eight participants were divided into four pairs with each participant serving as both a talker and a listener. The Callsign Acquisition Test was used to collect speech intelligibility data with the talker in quiet and in 100 dB(A) noise. The listener was always located in a quiet environment. Both types of microphones resulted in speech intelligibility scores ranging from 100% to 94% in quiet and from 100% to 90% in noise condition. There was no statistically significant difference in speech intelligibility between the two types of microphones. The advantages and disadvantages of using bone microphones under various civilian and military conditions are discussed.
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