TY - GEN
T1 - Evaluation of the penalized inequality constrained minimum variance beamformer for hearing aids
AU - Xiao, Jinjun
AU - Pu, Wenqiang
AU - Luo, Zhi Quan
AU - Zhang, Tao
PY - 2018/9/10
Y1 - 2018/9/10
N2 - Beamforming is a common technique used to improve speech intelligibility and listening comfort of hearing aids users in a noisy environment. Traditional beamforming algorithms such as linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformer cannot effectively suppress multiple interferences when the degree of freedom (DoF) of the array is less than the number of sources in the environment. In [1], a penalized inequality-constrained minimum variance (P-ICMV) beamformer was proposed to address this challenge. In this study, we evaluate the P-ICMV beamformer and compare its performance with other beamformers including the LCMV in a multiple-interference environment. In an objective evaluation, objective metrics related to speech intelligibility and sound quality are used to compare the algorithm performance. In a subjective evaluation, the speech intelligibility of the beamformer processed stimuli are evaluated using normal-hearing listeners. Both the objective and subjective evaluation results show that the P-ICMV beamformer can suppress the interferences more effectively than the existing beamformers when the array DoF is limited.
AB - Beamforming is a common technique used to improve speech intelligibility and listening comfort of hearing aids users in a noisy environment. Traditional beamforming algorithms such as linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformer cannot effectively suppress multiple interferences when the degree of freedom (DoF) of the array is less than the number of sources in the environment. In [1], a penalized inequality-constrained minimum variance (P-ICMV) beamformer was proposed to address this challenge. In this study, we evaluate the P-ICMV beamformer and compare its performance with other beamformers including the LCMV in a multiple-interference environment. In an objective evaluation, objective metrics related to speech intelligibility and sound quality are used to compare the algorithm performance. In a subjective evaluation, the speech intelligibility of the beamformer processed stimuli are evaluated using normal-hearing listeners. Both the objective and subjective evaluation results show that the P-ICMV beamformer can suppress the interferences more effectively than the existing beamformers when the array DoF is limited.
KW - Acoustic beamforming
KW - Binaural signal processing
KW - Microphone array signal processing
KW - Speech intelligibility
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85054241950&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85054241950&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICASSP.2018.8462539
DO - 10.1109/ICASSP.2018.8462539
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85054241950
SN - 9781538646588
T3 - ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings
SP - 3344
EP - 3348
BT - 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2018 - Proceedings
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2018
Y2 - 15 April 2018 through 20 April 2018
ER -