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as outdoors. But the modern digital hearing aids are very sophisticated and can perform various modifications on the incoming sound signals, which results in the enhancement of the overall quality of sound. This
very much helps in increasing the lucidity of communication in hearing-impaired people.
I visited the National
Institute of Speech and Hearing
in Trivandrum for gaining
hands-on experience in the
latest technologies related to
speech and hearing. I was very
much excited to see the real-
time hearing assessments and
their correcting procedures
conducted on children and
adults there. My research work
uses state-of-the-art digital
signal processing techniques
to design a very less complex
hearing aid. A generic system
has been developed that has a component saving of 40%–85% compared with other methods in the literature. A hearing aid with 17 bands has been developed, and the work was presented in the IEEE International Conference on Communication and Signal Processing at Chennai. This reconfigurable system can be used for any hearing-impaired person without any modifications in the hardware. Different optimization algorithms are applied for
Mr. Tomson Devis || 427
matching purposes, and the errors are within the globally accepted limits. The performance of the system is evaluated using the hearing data of several patients with SNHL and
presbycusis, and the results are very promising. Since the system uses very little hardware, the power consumption of the device is very less and the implementation cost is very low. This system is very well suited to the requirements of the people of countries such as India, where the cost is a driving factor in the widespread use of hearing aids. More research works in the direction of complexity reduction of the system is in progress.
This research work is progressing under the supervision of Dr Manju Manuel of Rajiv Gandhi Institute
of Technology (Government Engineering College), Kottayam, Kerala, and is funded by the Centre for Engineering Research and Development of APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, Kerala. After the completion of my research, I can confidently ask my old friends the very same question that lied hidden in my mind for years, ‘Can you hear me, my dear friend?’.
   The untreated hearing impairments may cause communication problems in them, leading to the feeling of loneliness, social isolation, frustration, etc. In addition
to this, spoken language development in children is often delayed with untreated hearing loss. But the current production of hearing aids lags behind the global need by more than 90%.
     









































































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