An efficient communication system for noisy environments

For environments subject to high level acoustic noise communication between people is difficult. This bemuses workers, limits working efficiency, and may even lead to accidents. Additionally, prolonged exposure to such noise results in damage to the human hearing system. A better isolation of people from the noisy machines is frequently technologically unfeasible or very expensive. Communication headsets available on the market are not ergonomic. On the other hand, they are not accepted in warm and humid environments because wearing them may cause skin galls. Therefore, at some places in mines, power plants, car factories, assembly lines, etc., the workers use earplugs made from an elastic noise absorbing material, and communication between them is limited to a set of gestures only. The aim of the paper is to present NoiseCom — a complex ergonomic earplug-based communication-improvement solution, integrating high passive and active noise reduction, enhancement of speech intelligibility and wireless speech transmission for a group of workers. Developed algorithms are presented and obtained results are reported based on recordings in real industrial conditions.