Low-power active bone conduction devices
AssigneeCochlear Limited
InventorsWerner Meskens, Wim Bervoets, Carl Van Himbeeck
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Abstract
Presented herein are low-power active bone conduction devices that 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.
Claims31
An ultra-low power active bone conduction device utilizing less than approximately two Milliwatts (mW) of power for operation, comprising:
- an actuator configured to be subcutaneously implanted within a recipient so as to deliver mechanical output forces to hard tissue of the recipient;
- a sigma-delta converter configured to convert received signals representative of sound into a serialized bit stream of sigma-delta pulses and to perform scaling of the sigma-delta pulses using a scaled sigma-delta quantization threshold level to limit a number of sigma-delta pulses in the serialized bit stream, wherein the sigma-delta converter performs the scaling only when a level of the received signals representative of sound is below an audio threshold level;
- and
- an audio driver configured to receive the serialized bit stream of sigma-delta pulses for use in driving the actuator;
- and
- 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.
A bone conduction device, comprising:
- an audio driver having first and second sides;
- an implantable actuator comprising a capacitive element;
- a multi-bit sigma-delta converter configured to receive a set of audio signals and to convert the set of audio signals into first and second sets of sigma-delta signals for delivery to the first and second sides, respectively, of the audio driver, wherein the sigma-delta converter operates to scale the sigma-delta signals using a scaled sigma-delta quantization threshold to introduce distortion into the first and second sets of sigma-delta signals only when the set of audio signals has an amplitude that is below a predetermined threshold;
- wherein the audio driver is configured to deliver the first and second sets of sigma-delta signals to the actuator in a manner that charges and discharges the capacitive element;
- and
- an energy recovery circuit configured to extract energy from the capacitive element while the capacitive element discharges and to add energy to the capacitive element while the capacitive element charges.
A bone conduction device, comprising:
- an actuator configured to deliver mechanical output forces to a recipient;
- a sigma-delta converter configured to convert received signals representative of sound into at least one serialized bit stream of sigma-delta pulses and to perform scaling of the sigma-delta pulses based on a scaled sigma-delta quantization threshold level to limit a number of sigma-delta pulses in the at least one serialized bit stream, wherein the sigma-delta converter performs the scaling only when a level of the received signals representative of sound is below an audio threshold level;
- and
- an audio driver configured to receive the at least one serialized bit stream of sigma-delta pulses for use in driving the actuator;
- and
- 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.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.