Effective communication between first responders is extremely important not only to accomplishing tasks but also to personal safety. However, because first responders usually work in a high-noise environment, the communication clarity is severely degraded. A variety of solutions to improve the communication efficiency have been tried, but none of them completely solve the problem. The purpose of this project is to present a novel and promising noise attenuation solution for first responder to effectively communicate in high-noise operation environment regardless of the communications mode (through radios in push-to-talk mode, VOX mode and without radios). After careful review the system requirement and several discussions with local firefighters, we designed a complete noise cancellation solution with the following four modules in one device: two new acoustic sensors, audio signal processing module, one loudspeaker and radio interface. The two acoustic sensors replaced traditional microphones and achieved significant improvement in speech signal-to-noise ratio and the speech intelligibility in firefighter communications. Our Phase II deliverables are several prototypes in the product level. They will fully meet the DHS` requirement and significantly benefit first responders` communication. The new device will be ready for large quantity manufacturing by the end of Phase II.
