On the Impact of Quantization on Binaural MVDR Beamforming

J. Amini, R. C. Hendriks, R. Heusdens, M. Guo, Jesper Rindom Jensen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)
45 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Multi-microphone noise reduction algorithms in binaural hearing aids which cooperate through a wireless link have the potential to become of great importance in future hearing aid systems. However, limited transmission capacity of such devices necessitates the data compression of signals transmitted from one hearing aid to the contralateral one. In this paper we study the impact of quantization as a data compression scheme on the performance of the multi-microphone noise reduction algorithms. Using the binaural minimum variance distortionless response (BMVDR) beamformer as an illustration, we propose a quantization aware beamforming scheme which uses a modified cross power spectral density (CPSD) of the system noise including the quantization noise (QN). Moreover, several assumptions on the QN are investigated in the proposed method. Based on the output SNR, we compare different variations of the proposed method with the conventional BMVDR beamformer. The results confirm the improved performance of the proposed method.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication12th ITG Conference on Speech Communication
PublisherVDE
Pages1-5
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)978-3-8007-4275-2
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Event12th ITG Conference on Speech Communication - Paderborn, Germany
Duration: 28 Sept 20167 Oct 2016
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=7776136

Conference

Conference12th ITG Conference on Speech Communication
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityPaderborn
Period28/09/167/10/16
Internet address

Keywords

  • multi-microphone noise reduction
  • binaural hearing aids
  • MVDR beamforming
  • quantization
  • dithering

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