On the use of spectro-temporal modulation in assisting adaptive feedback cancellation for hearing aid applications

Acoustic feedback cancellation in modern hearing aids is often performed using adaptive filters, in which the convergence rate has typically to be limited in order to maintain satisfactory steady-state performance. This can lead to slow feedback cancellation upon rapid feedback path changes, e.g., when a phone is moved towards the user's ear. In this work, we introduce a novel method by using spectro-temporal modulation in combination with an adaptive filter. We demonstrate through simulation experiments that when the traditional adaptive filter method has an insufficient convergence rate and thereby fails to cancel feedback upon rapid feedback path changes, the proposed system removes feedback immediately.