Hearing instruments go digital

摘要

This paper describes the backgrounds, required performances and choices made at system and circuit level to make a digital hearing aid, competitive in power and area with analog solutions. Power consumption of the digital circuitry working at 1.1 V equals that of the on-board analog interface circuitry. Though chip area is 35 square mm, and digital area takes about 80 percent, the rapid devlopment of CMOS processes makes this the turning point in from full analog to digital solutions.