Development of New Portable Equipment for Prototyping and Evaluation on Speech and Audio Signal Processing Applications

For researchers and engineers working on speech or audio signal processing, to implement and evaluate processing algorithms on specific devices such as DSP or FPGA is necessary for realizing real time signal processing applications. Furthermore, evaluation of algorithms in real world environment is very important. However, conventional evaluation boards are not portable or quality of sound interface is not enough. For evaluation in real world, we developed new portable equipment for prototyping and evaluation on speech and audio signal processing. It is a light and small box, which works with a rechargeable battery. This equipment includes a DSP and a FPGA, and audio interface up to 4-channel input and output. Furthermore, connected via USB interface, this equipment can be controlled from PC. As a sample application, we developed a prototype of hearing aid system on this equipment. The system conducts frequency independent amplitude compression in order to compensate for hearing loss. We can carry this equipment anywhere, so this prototype system is convenient for evaluation in daily life environment.