Direction of arrival estimation using deep neural network for hearing aid applications using smartphone.

Deep neural network (DNN) techniques are gaining popularity due to performance boost in many applications. In this work we propose a DNN-based method for finding the direction of arrival (DOA) of speech source for hearing study improvement and hearing aid applications using popular smartphone with no external components as a cost-effective stand-alone platform. We consider the DOA estimation as a classification problem and use the magnitude and phase of speech signal as a feature set for DNN training stage and obtaining appropriate model. The model is trained and derived using real speech and real noisy speech data recorded on smartphone in different noisy environments under low signal to noise ratios (SNRs). The DNN-based DOA method with the pre-trained model is implemented and run on Android smartphone in real time. The performance of proposed method is evaluated objectively and subjectively in the both training and unseen environments. The test results are presented showing the superior performance of proposed method over conventional methods.