Noise reduction for implantable hearing prostheses
AssigneeCochlear Limited
InventorKoen Van den Heuvel
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Presented herein are techniques for time interleaving the sampling of input signals with the delivery of stimulation signals to a recipient of an implantable electrically-stimulating hearing prosthesis. The input signals, which are received via one or more input channels and sampled by a sound processing unit, are susceptible to electrical feedback from the stimulation signals. As such, in accordance with embodiments presented herein, the sampling of the input signals by the sound processing unit, and the delivery of the stimulation signals to the recipient, are synchronized with one another so as to avoid stimulation-evoked electrical feedback within the input signals.
Claims20
A hearing device, comprising:
- at least one implantable sound sensor configured to convert received sound signals into electrical input signals;
- and
- a sound processing unit configured to sample the electrical input signals and to initiate generation of stimulation signals for delivery to a recipient via at least one output channel,
- wherein the sound processing unit is configured to synchronize sampling of the electrical input signals with the delivery of the-stimulation signals such that the sampling of the electrical input signals occurs only in a set of first time periods and the delivery of the stimulation signals occurs only in a set of second time periods that are different from the set of first time periods.
A method, comprising:
- receiving sound signals via at least one input channel of a hearing device, wherein the at least one input channel includes at least one implantable sound sensor;
- at the at least one implantable sound sensor, converting the sound signals into electrical input signals;
- sampling the electrical input signals at a sound processing unit to obtain input samples;
- delivering stimulation signals to a recipient via at least one output channel;
- and
- synchronizing the sampling of the electrical input signals with the delivering of the stimulation signals such that the sampling and the delivering occur during non-overlapping time frames.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.