Order selection of the hearing aid Feedback Canceller filter based on its impulse response energy

Numerous methods have been proposed to cancel the unpleasant effects of acoustic feedback between the loudspeaker and microphone in hearing aid systems. Adaptive Feedback Cancellation (AFC) methods are often used to estimate an FIR filter for cancelling the feedback path effect. In estimating the AFC FIR filter, it is important to select the order of the filter properly; especially when the feedback path changes from one environment to another and no knowledge about it is available. Choosing improper filter order causes deficient system performance or excessive computations and power usage in the system. We present tracking of the energy of AFC FIR filters and its convergence behavior as a new criterion for determining the proper order for AFC FIR filter. Experimental results show validity of the proposed criterion.