Optically Driven Wireless Earplug for Communications and Hearing Protection
Abstract
Electronic earplugs with embedded receivers provide for quality communications capability and effective double hearing protection in high noise environments. With the addition of ear canal microphones in the earplug greater hearing protection can be achieved using active noise reduction (ANR) in the ear canal. Current communication earplugs must be connected by wire to the outside world or must carry an onboard power source. The wire connection makes don and doff difficult, and presents a snag hazard and the connectors and wires pose possible problems in high EMI and EMP environments. Batteries in the earplug cause maintainability issues. The optically driven earplug described in this work eliminates the need for wire interconnects and earplug battery energy sources. Both the power to drive the earplug electronics and signals to and from the earplug are delivered optically through a free-space optical link to the outer layer of the double hearing protection. The optically driven earplug has been demonstrated to match the performance of a wire interconnect in both a listen-only earplug configuration and in two-way communication earplugs that can include ear canal Active Noise Reduction (ANR) with the addition of an ear canal microphone also driven through the optical interconnect.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA447826
Entities
People
- James Janousek
- James Wilt
- Jeffrey Buchholz
- Toby Klusmeyer