Real Time Implementation of Direction of Arrival Estimation on Android Platforms for Hearing Aid Applications

Sound Source Localization (SSL) is one of the vital areas in signal processing, especially in hearing aid applications. SSL (or Direction of Arrival) helps to determine the location of the speaker via multiple fixed microphones (also known as microphone array). Knowing of speaker Direction of Arrival (DOA) helps to improve the performance of the system. Another advantage of DOA is that it helps hearing-impaired people to locate talker because hearing aid users, especially those who are older than 60 years, have difficulties in determining the place of the speaker. Having requisite processing capabilities and at least two microphones makes smartphones a cost-effective solution for multi-channel audio signal processing. In this thesis, we propose a new stereo input/output framework for Android platforms for audio signal processing. This frame enables us to perform multi or single channel audio signal processing for real-time operations. We also propose a method for two microphones-based Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation and real-time implementation of this method on the latest Android smartphones.