A 1-Channel 3-Band Wide Dynamic Range Compression Chip for Vibration Transducer of Implantable Hearing Aids

Issue title: Frontiers in Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology – Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, 11–13 October 2013, Wuhan, China

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Kim, DongWook | Seong, KiWoong | Kim, MyoungNam | Cho, JinHo | Lee, JyungHyun^;

Affiliations: Department of Electrical Engineering Graduate School, Kyungpook National University, Deagu, South Korea | Department of Biomedical Engineering, Kyungpook Nation University Hospital, pung@hmail.knu.ac.kr, Daegu, South Korea | Graduate School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea | School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Deagu, South Korea

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: JyungHyun Lee.pung@hmail.knu.ac.kr

Abstract: In this paper, a digital audio processing chip which uses a wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) algorithm is designed and implemented for implantable hearing aids system. The designed chip operates at a single voltage of 3.3V and drives a 16 bit parallel input and output at 32 kHz sample. The designed chip has 1-channel 3-band WDRC composed of a FIR filter bank, a level detector, and a compression part. To verify the performance of the designed chip, we measured the frequency separations of bands and compression gain control to reflect the hearing threshold level.

Keywords: wide dynamic range compression, implantable hearing aids, vibration transducer, fitting formula, application specific integrated circuit

DOI: 10.3233/BME-130898

Journal: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 1009-1017, 2014