The Acoustically Transparent Hearing Device: Towards Integration of Individualized Sound Equalization, Electro-Acoustic Modeling and Feedback Cancellation

Assistive hearing devices often suffer from a low acceptance by the end user due to poor sound quality. Recently, a novel acoustically transparent hearing device was developed that aims at increasing the acceptance and benefit, also for (near-to) normalhearing people, by providing better sound quality. The hearing device integrates three microphones and two receivers and can be calibrated in-situ in an attempt to conserve the open-ear sound transmission characteristics of an individual person. To further improve the quality of acoustic transparency and extend the functionality of the hearing device, we outline the integration of further models and algorithms. Electro-acoustic models of the device can improve adjustment to transparency by providing a better estimate of the pressure at the eardrum with an in-ear microphone. In addition, the multi-microphone device layout allows the development of custom feedback cancellation algorithms by means of a beamformer in order to robustly steer a spatial null towards the hearing device receiver.