Question
How much benefit in SNR is possible with a wireless transmission system?
Answer
An objective study to investigate the benefits of digital transmitted sound, such as found in Secure Stream Technology (SST) in the Comfort Digisystem from Comfort Audio, was conducted by Sergei Smirnov PhD, at the Department of Electrical and Information Technology, Lund University, Sweden. The result showed that depending on the level of input, the SNR could be improved with up to 25 dB. The benefit for the user was dependent on the original SNR. The improvement was shown both by using babble noise and ICRA noise in this study.
When the original SNR was - 10 dB, using Comfort Digisystem improved the SNR by up to 24 dB;when the original SNR = 0, the improvement was up to 17 dB, and in +10 dB SNR, the improvement was up to 8 dB. These results can be compared with using only a dual microphone hearing aid, where improvement is typically in the range 3-6 dB SNR. (Pumford, 2000)
Thank you for your question. More information about the Comfort Digisystem with SST can be found at: www.comfortaudio.com/us/ or the Comfort Audio web channel on AudiologyOnline.
Reference:
Pumford, J.M., Seewald, R.C., Scollie, S.D., Jensted, L.M. (2000). Speech recognition with in-the-ear and behind-the-ear dual-microphone hearing instruments. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 11(1), 23 - 35.
Carljohan Lagervall is a development engineer with a degree from Halmstad University, Sweden. Carljohan is one of the owners and founders of Comfort Audio. He started the company together with August Pansell in 1994. In 2011, Comfort Audio was awarded with the "Best New Product Award" at AudiologyNow! as well as the "Swedish Embedded Award".