Rate-constrained binaural MWF-based noise reduction algorithms

Abstract:
In a binaural hearing aid system, output signals for the left and the right ear are generated by exchanging information between the two hearing aids. A significant noise reduction can be achieved using the binaural multi-channel Wiener filter (MWF), which requires all microphone signals from both hearing aids. However, the limited bandwidth of the binaural link typically does not allow to transmit all microphone signals between the two hearing aids. Recently, an iterative distributed MWF-based scheme has been presented, where each hearing aid only transmits a filtered combination of its microphone signals. In this paper, the performance gain of the binaural MWF and the iterative distributed MWF scheme are analysed as a function of the available bandwidth of the binaural link.