Improved Mandarin Chinese Perception for Cochlear Implants Using an Auditory Model based on Stochastic Stimulation

In this study, we propose an auditory model based on stochastic stimulation to enhance the low frequency (LF) information for a cochlear implant, which improves the perception of Mandarin Chinese. For LF channels, a model of the peripheral auditory system is used to generate the stochastic impulse, which is closer to the physiological activity of auditory neural firing. For high frequency channels, interleaved impulses are generated when no impulses appear in the LF channels. Compared with previous methods, such as the continuous interleaved sampling and zerocrossing-based stimulation strategies, our method makes three main contributions: i) both envelope and impulse intervals are employed to transmit speech information; ii) Mandarin Chinese perception is improved in noisy and quiet environments; and iii) the robustness of the proposed strategy is higher and even valid in noisy situations.