Sound transducer calibration of ambulatory audiometric system utilizing delta learning rule

Abstract

An efficient calibration algorithm for an ambulatory audiometric test system is proposed. This system utilizes a personal digital assistant (PDA) device to generate the correct sound pressure level (SPL) from an audiometric transducer such as an earphone. The calibrated sound intensities for an audio-logical examination can be obtained in terms of the sound pressure levels of pure-tonal sinusoidal signals in eight-banded frequency ranges (250, 500, 1 000, 2 000, 3 000, 4 000, 6 000 and 8 000 Hz), and with mapping of the input sound pressure levels by the weight coefficients that are tuned by the delta learning rule. With this scheme, the sound intensities, which evoke eight-banded sound pressure levels by 5 dB steps from a minimum of 25 dB to a maximum of 80 dB, can be generated without volume displacement. Consequently, these sound intensities can be utilized to accurately determine the hearing threshold of a subject in the ambulatory audiometric testing environment.

Keywords

calibration / audiometric system / pure-tonal sound / sound pressure level / hearing threshold / delta learning rule

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