Hardware Efficient Reconfigurable Digital Hearing aid using Pascal Structure

This paper proposes a hardware efficient reconfigurable digital hearing aid with minimum delay and minimum matching error, employing Pascal structure based continuously variable bandwidth filter. An FIR filter fitted in between two Pascal structure based sampling rate converters can yield continuous change in bandwidth. The continuously variable bandwidth filter can be employed for audiogram matching with minimal error by proper selection of gain, shift and bandwidth. The proposed design is found to be better than the works in the literature in terms of delay, matching error and hardware complexity. In audiograms with flat region, the modularity property of the Pascal structure can also be utilized to minimize the matching error. The Matching Pursuits Generalized Bit-Planes (MPGBP) algorithm is used to make the reconfigurable filter structure multiplier-less for a power-efficient design. Additionally, the proposed structure is synthesized using FPGA and ASIC technology to support the claimed minimal hardware complexity and power.