Occlusion Effect Reduction Using a Vibration Sensor

Abstract

As in-ear headphones are worn for increasing periods of time, the occlusion effect (OE) becomes a growing problem for their users. Today, in-ear headphones are often equipped with active noise cancellation (ANC) systems. Previous research has shown that it is possible to use ANC systems to reduce the OE. In this publication, we present a novel feedforward OE reduction system based on a head-mounted accelerometer. The accelerometer acts as a vibration sensor, which enables us to directly capture and subsequently cancel low frequency body-conducted speech components contributing to the OE. We demonstrate that the system is capable of reducing the OE in simulations, as well as using measurements with a real-time implementation.

Authors 2

1. Christoph Weyer Aachen Institute of Communication Systems

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University,Institute of Communication Systems

   Institute of Communication Systems, RWTH Aachen University

2. Peter Jax Aachen Institute of Communication Systems

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University,Institute of Communication Systems

   Institute of Communication Systems, RWTH Aachen University