Technique to improve user’s perceptibility of audio in noisy environments in mobile devices

Mobile devices employ various audio signals/sounds to alert the users. In a dynamic environment, various noises might interfere with the user’s perception of these signals/sounds therefore limiting the user’s interaction with the mobile device resulting in the user missing these alerts. In this paper we describe a technique to improve the user’s perceptibility of the sound played from an electronic device, specifically a mobile phone’s ringtone, in a noisy environment by modifying the characteristics of the audio signal/sound based on the co-relation between the played audio and the ambient noise. The data generated in the experiments substantiate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism. We have also developed a tool which allows the user to adjust the parameters of the ringtone audio and produces enhanced audio w.r.t. the selected noise.