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Wireless remote microphones (RMs) transmit the desired acoustic signal to the hearing aid (HA) and facilitate enhanced listening in challenging environments. Fitting and verification of RMs, and benchmarking the relative performance of different RM devices in varied acoustic environments are of significant interest to Audiologists and RM developers. This paper investigates the application of instrumental speech intelligibility and quality metrics for characterizing the RM performance in two acoustic environments with varying amounts of background noise and reverberation. In both environments, two head and torso simulators (HATS) were placed 2 m apart, where one HATS served as the talker and the other served as the listener. Four RM systems were interfaced separately with a HA programmed to match the prescriptive targets for the N4 standard audiogram and placed on the listener HATS. The HA output in varied acoustic conditions was recorded and analyzed offline through computational models predicting speech intelligibility and quality. Results showed performance differences among the four RMs in the presence of noise and/or reverberation, with one RM exhibiting significantly better performance. Clinical implications and applications of these results are discussed.

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Summary In this article, an algorithm is presented for solving the optimal control problem for the general form of a hybrid switching system. The cost function comprises terminal, running and switching costs. The controlled system is an autonomous hybrid switching system with jumps either at some switching times or some time varying switching manifolds. The proposed algorithm is an extension of the first‐order gradient method for the conventional optimal control problem. The algorithm requires a low computational effort. The system's dynamical equations together with a set of algebraic equations are solved at each iteration in order to find the descent direction. The convergence of algorithm is proved and examples are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithm for different types of hybrid switching system optimal control problems.

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