Howling and Entrainment in Hearing Aids: A Review

Authors

  • Muhammad Tahir Akhtar COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
  • Akinori Nishihara Tokyo Institute of Technology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4186/ej.2016.20.5.5

Keywords:

Hearing aids, adaptive filtering, NLMS algorithm, acoustic feedback, howling, entrainment.

Abstract

This review focuses on howling and entrainment artifacts in digital hearing aids. The howling may occur (especially at high gains), essentially due to the close proximity of the input microphone and the output loudspeaker. The entrainment, on the other hand, occurs when the input to the hearing aids is periodic, for example, music signals or alarm signals with strong tonal characteristics. We give details on methods for howling avoidance, which are mainly based on adaptive filtering-based acoustic feedback cancellation. We also give an overview of many recent works on entrainment in hearing aids. Finally, we remark that efficient acoustic feedback cancellation scheme which can avoid howling, can also well manage the entrainment artifact.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Muhammad Tahir Akhtar
Google Scholar

Department of Electrical Engineering, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Park Road, Chak Shahzad, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan

Akinori Nishihara
Google Scholar

Human Assets Promotion Program for Innovative Education and Research (HAPPIER), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan

Downloads

Published In
Vol 20 No 5, Nov 25, 2016
How to Cite
[1]
M. T. Akhtar and A. Nishihara, “Howling and Entrainment in Hearing Aids: A Review”, Eng. J., vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 5-13, Nov. 2016.
Cited By
Find in Google Scholar

Authors who publish with Engineering Journal agree to transfer all copyright rights in and to the above work to the Engineering Journal (EJ)'s Editorial Board so that EJ's Editorial Board shall have the right to publish the work for nonprofit use in any media or form. In return, authors retain: (1) all proprietary rights other than copyright; (2) re-use of all or part of the above paper in their other work; (3) right to reproduce or authorize others to reproduce the above paper for authors' personal use or for company use if the source and EJ's copyright notice is indicated, and if the reproduction is not made for the purpose of sale.