Microcomputer-based tactile hearing prosthesis

A fully programmable digital speech processing system for deaf patients is described. Speech coding is based on vector quantization. The system simulates in real-time the characteristics of a 10-channel tactile vocoder. The system is based on three chips: a Codec TCM29C13, a DSP digital signal processor TMS320E17, and a full custom integrated BiCmos circuit. The architecture of this portable, low-power unit allows a market improvement in synthetic vowel discrimination.<
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