Patent ID: 7072717

Claim:
A cochlear implant prosthesis of the type having a transducer for converting an acoustic signal to an electrical signal, a plurality of bandpass filtering means responsive to said electrical signal and operatively producing a plurality of bandpass filtered signals, signal processing means responsive to said plurality of bandpass filtered signals and operatively generating stimulation commands, electrode driving means responsive to said stimulation commands and an electrode array coupled to said electrode driving means for operatively delivering to a user of said cochlear implant prosthesis stimulations in accordance with said stimulation commands, said signal processing means including: a) period estimation means, responsive to said filtered signals and operatively generating periodicity signals indicative of the periodicity of each of at least a number of said plurality of filtered signals; b) amplitude estimation means responsive to said filtered signals and operatively generating magnitude signals indicative of the magnitude of each of said plurality of filtered signals; c) selection means responsive to said magnitude signals arranged to select only one filtered signal of said plurality of filtered signals in each stimulation period, said selection means generating said stimulation commands including a command to stimulate by means of an electrode operatively best corresponding to said one filtered signal, said command to stimulate further specifying a time for stimulation to occur dependent on a corresponding one of said periodicity signals.