Low-power active bone conduction devices

#Field of the Invention

#The present invention relates generally to active bone conduction devices.

#Related Art

#Embodiments of the present invention are described herein in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

#FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a low-power active transcutaneous bone conduction device in accordance with embodiments presented herein;

#FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating another low-power active transcutaneous bone conduction device in accordance with embodiments presented herein;

#Presented herein are low-power active bone conduction devices. The low-power active bone conduction devices generally comprise an actuator that is subcutaneously implanted within a recipient so as to deliver mechanical output forces to hard tissue of the recipient. The low-power active bone conduction devices include an energy recovery circuit configured to extract non-used energy from the actuator and to store the non-used energy for subsequent use by the actuator. The low-power active bone conduction devices may also include a multi-bit sigma-delta converter that operates in accordance with a scaled sigma-delta quantization threshold value to convert received signals representative of sound into actuator drive signals.

#In certain embodiments, the actuator is a piezoelectric actuator. In other embodiments, the actuator may be, for example, an electromagnetic, magnetostrictive, or a Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based actuator. For ease of illustration, embodiments are primarily described herein with reference to the use of an implantable piezoelectric actuator.

#FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a first low-power bone conduction device 100 in accordance with embodiments presented herein. The bone conduction device 100 includes an external component 102 and an implantable component 104. The bone conduction device 100 of FIG. 1 is referred to as an “active” transcutaneous bone conduction device because the implantable component 104 includes a subcutaneously implanted actuator/transducer (i.e., the active vibration generation component is implanted within the recipient, rather than positioned externally). The bone conduction device 100 of FIG. 1 is also referred to as a “transcutaneous” device because the device includes the external component 102 that provides data for use in stimulating the hearing of a recipient. As such, low-power bone conduction device 100 is sometimes referred to herein as a low-power active transcutaneous bone conduction device.