US 12,081,943 B2
Beamforming devices for hearing assistance
Yehonatan Hertzberg, Shoham (IL); Oran Bertelsen, Ramat Gan (IL); Omer Kotzer, Tel Aviv (IL); Igor Gitelstain, Rehovot (IL); Ori Goren, Shoham (IL); and Stanislav Berlin, Kiryat Ono (IL)
Assigned to NUANCE HEARING LTD., Tel Aviv (IL)
Appl. No. 17/766,736
Filed by NUANCE HEARING LTD., Tel Aviv (IL)
PCT Filed Oct. 14, 2020, PCT No. PCT/IB2020/059654
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Apr. 6, 2022,
PCT Pub. No. WO2021/074818, PCT Pub. Date Apr. 22, 2021.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/915,660, filed on Oct. 16, 2019.
Claims priority of provisional application 63/003,930, filed on Apr. 2, 2020.
Prior Publication US 2023/0336926 A1, Oct. 19, 2023
Int. Cl. H04R 25/00 (2006.01)
CPC H04R 25/407 (2013.01) [H04R 25/405 (2013.01); H04R 2460/01 (2013.01)] 24 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. Apparatus for hearing assistance, comprising:
a spectacle frame, comprising a front piece and temples connected to respective edges of the front piece;
one or more microphones mounted at respective first locations on the front piece and configured to output electrical signals in response to first acoustic waves that are incident on the microphones;
a speaker mounted at a second location on one of the temples and configured to output second acoustic waves in response to a drive signal applied to the speaker; and
processing circuitry, which is configured to generate the drive signal by processing the electrical signals output by the one or more microphones so as to cause the speaker to reproduce, in the second acoustic waves, selected sounds occurring in the first acoustic waves with a delay, relative to an incidence of the first acoustic waves on the one or more microphones, that is equal within 20% to a transit time of the first acoustic waves from the first location to the second location, thereby engendering constructive interference of the selected sounds between the first and second acoustic waves,
wherein the processing circuitry is configured to adjust the delay of the selected sounds reproduced in the second acoustic waves relative to the first acoustic waves from the first location to the second location, and
wherein the delay is selected so as to apply the constructive interference to the first acoustic waves that are incident on the one or more microphones from within a selected angular range while applying destructive interference to the first acoustic waves that are incident on the one or more microphones from directions outside the selected angular range.