Smartphone and algorithms: A platform for hearing study

Popular smartphones are portable devices with useful features such as powerful processor, microphones, speakers, low audio input/output delay, wire and wireless communication capability, graphical user interface (GUI) and easy-to-use touch screen. The smartphone features are improved every year. These features make smartphone a powerful stand-alone device for the development and real-time implementation of novel signal processing algorithms suitable for improving hearing study and hearing aid applications. In this paper, we present our smartphone-based platform and associated tools and documents for hearing study and hearing aid applications. An overview is given of the algorithms/apps developed to run on iOS and Android based smartphones in real time. Summary of the performance of developed algorithms/apps using smartphone is presented in comparison with other devices that are available in the market under different noisy conditions and low SNRs.