Speech Separation Methodology for Hearing Aid

Abstract

In the design of hearing aids (HA), the real-time speech-enhancement is done. The digital hearing aids should provide high signal-to-noise ratio, gain improvement and should eliminate feedback. In generic hearing aids the performance towards different frequencies varies and non uniform. Existing noise cancellation and speech separation methods drops the voice magnitude under the noise environment. The performance of the HA for frequency response is non uniform. Existing noise suppression methods reduce the required signal strength also. So, the performance of uniform sub band analysis is poor when hearing aid is concern. In this paper, a speech separation method using Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) algorithm is proposed for wavelet decomposition. The Proposed non-uniform filter-bank was validated by parameters like band power, Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), Mean Square Error (MSE), Signal to Noise and Distortion Ratio (SINAD), Spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR), error and time. The speech recordings before and after separation was evaluated for quality using objective speech quality measures International Telecommunication Union -Telecommunication standard ITU-T P.862.