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Design of hardware-efficient digital hearing aids using non-uniform MDFT filter banks

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Abstract

This paper proposes the design of a simple digital hearing aid using non-uniform modified discrete Fourier transform filter bank. Here, the non-uniform filter bank is obtained by first designing a uniform filter bank and then merging suitable bands to obtain the desired non-uniform structure. In hearing aids, narrow channels with adjustable gains can be allocated to those frequency regions of the audiogram with sharp transition, whereas wider passband channels can be allocated to frequency regions with slower transitions. The latter can be done by merging the bands in those regions. It is shown in this paper that matching error, delay and hardware complexity in terms of the number of multipliers required for the prototype filter are lower than the existing techniques for all types of hearing losses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology Calicut, Kozhikode, Kerala, India

    Sakthivel Vellaisamy & Elizabeth Elias

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  1. Sakthivel Vellaisamy
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  2. Elizabeth Elias
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Correspondence to Sakthivel Vellaisamy.

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Vellaisamy, S., Elias, E. Design of hardware-efficient digital hearing aids using non-uniform MDFT filter banks. SIViP 12, 1429–1436 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-017-1225-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-017-1225-1

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