Digital signal processing technology and applications in hearing aids

Digital signal processing has found applications in almost every industry and the hearing aid industry is no exception. Building practical DSP platforms for hearing aids has been difficult due to the physical limitations of small size, low power consumption and low operating voltage, and although progress was initially very slow, real advances have been made during the last decade. Now DSP based hearing aids make use of many well-known digital signal processing technologies developed for communication, speech processing, radar and sonar systems. More sophisticated digital platforms are going to be created and more advanced digital signal processing technologies will be developed and implemented on this new digital hardware. This paper addresses DSP hardware, algorithm, and their application in hearing aids.