Cochlear implants are neural implants which allow people with severe hearing loss to perceive sounds and speech. Many cochlear implants are equipped with a “telecoil” antenna that picks up electromagnetic fields from assistive listening systems. But the telecoil can also pick up noise from the other electronic and electrical parts of the cochlear implant itself, thus degrading signal purity and perceived audio quality.
Oneirix Labs used the mathematics of complex numbers to devise a signal processing system that cancels such noise, improving sound perception for the implantee. The system works by tracking noise frequency and phase using a complex resonant filter. An algorithm then adaptively cancels this noise frequency. Interestingly, the system can also cancel harmonic and intermodulation harmonic noise, without using separate trackers for each such frequency.
For more information, see: Systems and methods for cancelling tonal noise in a cochlear implant system.
