Near-end speech intelligibility enhancement with minimal artifacts

A computer implemented method for enhancement of speech intelligibility in a communication device arranged for a near-end side of a communication with a far-end device, comprising:

• calculating a calculated measure of speech intelligibility at the near-end side in response to a near-end audio input and a far-end audio input from the far-end device,
• optimizing parameters of a predetermined speech enhancement algorithm in response to:
• 1) the calculated measure of speech intelligibility, 2) a predetermined speech intelligibility target, and 3) at least one additional target to generate an optimized speech enhancement algorithm,
• optimizing parameters of the optimized speech enhancement algorithm based on calculating an estimated speech intelligibility index and calculating a penalty measure, wherein the penalty measure is calculated as a measure of error between a speech signal after processing by the optimized speech enhancement algorithm and a speech signal in the far-end audio input
• processing the far-end audio input according to the optimized speech enhancement algorithm, and
• generating a near-end audio output in response to an output from the optimized speech enhancement algorithm.