A sparse improved gradient controlled method for feedback cancellation in hearing aid

In feedback cancellation in hearing aids, an adaptive filter is used to model the feedback path. The output of the adaptive filter is subtracted from the microphone signal to cancel the acoustic and mechanical feedback picked up by the microphone, thus allowing more gain in the hearing aid. In general, the feedback cancellation filter adapts on the hearing-aid input signal, and signal cancellation and coloration artifacts can occur for a narrowband input. The goal in feedback cancellation is to design an algorithm that is computationally efficient, provides 10 dB or more of additional amplifier headroom, and is free from processing artifacts.This chapter begins with a steady-state analysis of the effects of acoustic feedback on the hearing-aid response. This analysis illustrates the factors that can affect the accuracy of the adaptive filter and the filter convergence for systems adapting with or without a probe signal. The characteristics of the feedback path being modeled are then described. An additional concern in designing signal processing for a hearing aid are the processing constraints imposed by a low-power portable device, and these concerns are discussed next. Two forms of constrained adaptation are then derived, and simulation results are used to give a comparison of the constrained adaptation with the conventional unconstrained approach for a system adapting without a probe signal. Further improvements in feedback cancellation performance, particularly a reduction in audible processing artifacts, can be achieved by using the filtered-X algorithm, and this approach is described next.The performance of feedback cancellation is ultimately limited by the characteristics of the room in which the listener is located since the room reflections form part of the feedback path. The chapter concludes with a study of the feedback path in a room along with the feedback cancellation performance for an 8-, 16-, or 32-tap adaptive FIR filter in series with a five-pole nonadaptive filter, and the performance limitations imposed by the room reverberation are discussed.KeywordsImpulse ResponseFeedback PathAdaptive FeedbackAcoustic FeedbackRoom ReverberationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

In this contribution we describe an adaptive feed-back cancellation (FBC) system realized with 48 sub-band filters. As core procedure we propose a combination of two decorrelation measures to stabilize and optimally control the adaptation. We show that especially this combination of pre-whitening and frequency shift allows realizing three major steps for a fast and reliable FBC in real hearing aids. First, the adaptation bias is removed. Second, an optimal adaptation control can be realized, and third, we show that a differentiation between feedback and tonal input signals is possible. The latter can be used for an additional improvement of the adaptation control.

Adaptive feedback cancellation in hearing aids

An improved block adaptive system for effective feedback cancellation in hearing aids

Affine projection algorithms (APA) have been widely employed for acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) since they provide a natural trade-off between convergence speed and computational complexity. However, their application in Acoustic Feedback Cancellation (AFC) in hearing aids so far has been limited due to lack of performance improvement in one microphone settings. A two microphone technique was recently proposed to provide an improved cancellation for a larger class of input signals. This paper proposes to use APA in the two microphone closed-loop feedback cancellation. It is shown that APA has significantly improved the misalignment and maximum stable gain of the system. Moreover, a new variable Gaussian step-size control (VGSS) for APA is also proposed. The simulation results indicate an improvement in convergence speed of the proposed algorithms as compared to previously suggested methods.

Among all adaptive noise cancellers, Widrow and Hoff's least mean square (LMS) algorithm has probably become the most popular because of its robustness, good tacking properties and simplicity of implementation. An important limitation of LMS algorithm is that the selection of a certain value for the step size implies compromise between speed of convergence and steady-state misadjustment, The variable step size normalized least-mean-square (VSS- NLMS) algorithm is appropriate to solve the conflicting requirement of fast convergence and low misadjustment of the LMS algorithm. To reduce noise in the output signal of the ANC, a step size for coefficient update is controlled according to the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This paper investigates the performance of a noise canceller with DSP processor (TI TMS320C6713) using the LMS algorithm, normalized least-mean-square (NLMS) algorithm, and VSS-NLMS algorithm. Results show the proposed combination of hardware and VSS-NLMS algorithm has not only a faster convergence rate but also lower distortion when compared with the fixed step size LMS algorithm and NLMS algorithm in real-time environments.

The transversal adaptive filter using the least mean square (LMS) algorithm of Widrow and Ropf (1976) has been widely used mainly due to its relative ease of implementation. The major drawback of this time-domain LMS (TDLMS) algorithm is that as the eigenvalue spread of the input autocorrelation matrix increases, the convergence speed of the algorithm decreases. This led to the transform domain adaptive filters where the input signals are orthogonalized. Normalized frequency domain LMS algorithms (NFDLMS) are known to be faster than the time domain implementations. However, in some implementations with low signal to return noise ratio, NFDLMS algorithms can have stability problems. The stability problem can be solved by weighting the normalization gain /spl mu/. We perform computer simulations for the telephone echo channel and show that the modified /spl mu/-weighted NFDLMS algorithm is 8 times faster than the time-domain LMS (TDLMS) algorithm and more stable than the NFDLMS algorithm over a wide range of signal to noise ratios.

One of the most important applications of adaptive filter is Interference or noise cancellation. The objective of adaptive interference cancellation is to obtain an estimate of the interfering signal and to subtract it from the corrupted signal and hence obtain a noise free signal. The tracking performances of the LMS and NLMS algorithms are compared when the input of the adaptive filter is no stationary For this purpose, the filter uses an adaptive algorithm to change the value of the filter coefficients, so that it acquires a better approximation of the signal after each iteration. The LMS (Least Mean Square), and its variant the NLMS (Normalized LMS) are two of the adaptive algorithms widely in use. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the LMS and the NLMS in case of interference cancellation from speech signals. For each algorithm, the effects of two parameters-filter length and step size have been analyzed. Finally, the performances of the two algorithms in different cases have been compared.

It is shown that two algorithms obtained by simplifying a Kalman filter considered for a second-order Markov model are H∞ suboptimal. Similar to least mean squares (LMS) and normalised LMS (NLMS) algorithms, these second order algorithms can be thought of as approximate solutions to stochastic or deterministic least squares minimisation. It is proved that second-order LMS and NLMS are exact solutions causing the maximum energy gain from the disturbances to the predicted and filtered errors to be less than one, respectively. These algorithms are implemented in two steps. Operation of the first step is like conventional LMS/NLMS algorithms and the second step consists of the estimation of the weight increment vector and prediction of weights for the next iteration. This step applies simple smoothing on the increment of the estimated weights to estimate the speed of the weights. Also they are cost-effective, robust and attractive for improving the tracking performance of smoothly time-varying models.

In the radio observation based on the large single antenna, in order to reduce the interference of navigation signal L 2 from observation of the red-shifted H I spectral line at L-band, we used the an auxiliary channel and normalized LMS algorithm, and proposed new evaluating indicators deduced by theoretical method. Finally, we verified the suppression performance and the indicators' utility by multiple simulations and statistical method.

In feedback cancellation in hearing aids, an adaptive filter is used to model the feedback path. The output of the adaptive filter is subtracted from the microphone signal to cancel the acoustic and mechanical feedback picked up by the microphone, thus allowing more gain in the hearing aid. In general, the feedback-cancellation filter adapts on the hearing-aid input signal, and signal cancellation and coloration artifacts can occur for a narrow-band input. In this paper, two procedures for LMS adaptation with a constraint on the magnitude of the adaptive weight vector are derived. The constraints greatly reduce the probability that the adaptive filter will cancel a narrow-band input. Simulation results are used to demonstrate the efficacy of the constrained adaptation.

A novel adaptive filter algorithm has been proposed that provides faster convergence than the least mean square (LMS) and normalized LMS (NLMS) algorithms. The NLMS algorithm is studied and modified so that the error sequence is used for designing the step size parameter at each iteration. A strategy to reduce the computational complexity the NLMS adaptation requires is used in the proposed algorithm. Computer simulations demonstrate that in the scenario of channel equalization, the proposed algorithm based on the structure of a transversal filter accomplishes faster start-up than the combined LMS/F algorithm recently addressed.

This paper proposes a new variable step-size adaptive filtering algorithm based on the LMS algorithm and compares its performance with Least Mean Squares(LMS), Normalized Least Mean Squares(NLMS), Modified Sigmoid- LMS(MLMS) and Regularized NLMS(RNLMS) algorithms. The results indicate that compared to the other comparative algorithms, this algorithm can more effectively improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the filter output. Furthermore, within a wide input signal-to-noise ratio range, this algorithm can consistently enhance the filter signal-to-noise ratio output, effectively addressing the problem of inconsistent filtering effects caused by the input signal-to-noise ratio sensitivity in algorithms such as NLMS algorithms.

Adaptive filtering techniques have gained much popularity in the modeling of unknown system identification problem. These techniques can be classified as either iterative or direct. Iterative techniques include stochastic descent method and its improved versions in affine space. In this paper we present a comparative study of the least mean square (LMS) algorithm and some improved versions of LMS, more precisely the normalized LMS (NLMS), LMS-Newton, transform domain LMS (TDLMS) and affine projection algorithm (APA). The performance evaluation of these algorithms is carried out using adaptive system identification (ASI) model with random input signals, in which the unknown (measured) signal is assumed to be contaminated by output noise. Simulation results are recorded to compare the performance in terms of convergence speed, robustness, misalignment, and their sensitivity to the spectral properties of input signals. Main objective of this comparative study is to observe the effects of fast convergence rate of improved versions of LMS algorithms on their robustness and misalignment.

The feedback cancellation scheme in hearing aids mainly employs Filtered-XLMS (FXLMS) algorithm However, the conventional FXLMS algorithm doesnot provide satisfactory performance in the presence of outliers acquired by the microphone. In this paper, Filtered-X Wilcoxon LMS (FXWLMS) and Filtered-X least mean log square (FXLMLS) are being introduced as two robust learning algorithms for effective feedback cancellation in the presence of outliers. The simulation studies demonstrate the superior feedback cancellation performance of FXLMLS and FXWLMS over FXLMS in the presence of outliers.