A Parametric Unconstrained Binaural Beamformer Based Noise Reduction And Spatial Cue Preservation For Hearing-Assistive Devices

For hearing-impaired users, it is required not only to enhance the target speech by suppressing ambient noises, but also to preserve the binaural cues of important directional sources, such that a complete spatial awareness of the acoustic scene is obtained. In this work, we propose a parametric unconstrained binaural (PUB) beamformer, which can achieve a trade-off between noise reduction and binaural cue preservation. The involved parameters are chosen to control the target distortion level and the preservation of interfering sources, respectively. Theoretical analysis shows that the conventional binaural beamformers can be seen as the special cases of the PUB description. Simulation results validate the superiority of the proposed method.