Patent ID: RE41775

Claim:
A binaural hearing system comprising a first and a second hearing prosthesis adapted for wireless bi-directional communication of digital data signals; the first hearing prosthesis comprises: a first microphone adapted to generate a first input signal in response to receiving acoustic signals, a first analogue-to-digital converter adapted to sample the first input signal by a first sampling clock signal to generate a first digital input signal, a first clock generator adapted to generate a coding clock signal, a data rate clock signal and the first sampling clock signal synchronously with respect to each other, a first sequence generator adapted to generate a repetitive coding sequence synchronously to the coding clock signal, first data generating means adapted to provide a first data signal synchronously to the data rate clock signal, a first wireless transceiver adapted to receive and modulate the first data signal with the repetitive coding sequence to transmit a first modulated data signal to a second wireless transceiver of the second hearing prosthesis and to retrieve a second data signal from a second modulated data signal received from the second wireless transceiver, first output means adapted to convert a first processed data signal to a first acoustical or electrical output signal; and the second hearing prosthesis comprises: a second microphone adapted to generate a second input signal in response to receiving acoustic signals, a second analogue-to-digital converter adapted to sample the second input signal by a second sampling clock signal to generate a second digital input signal, a second sequence generator adapted to generate a version of the repetitive coding sequence of the first sequence generator synchronously to a second coding clock signal, second data generating means adapted to provide a second data signal synchronously to a retrieved clock signal, a second wireless transceiver adapted to receive the first modulated data signal from the first wireless transceiver and to modulate the second data signal with the version of the repetitive coding sequence to transmit a second modulated data signal to the first wireless transceiver, second clock and data retrieval means adapted to lock onto the first modulated data signal to retrieve the first data signal and to generate the second sampling clock signal and the retrieved clock signal, synchronously to the first coding clock signal, by correlating said first modulated data signal with the version of the repetitive coding sequence, second output means adapted to convert a second processed data signal to a first acoustical or electrical output signal; whereby the respective sampling clock signals of the hearing prostheses are synchronised in time so as to provide a hearing system with synchronous sampling of the respective microphone input signals.