Abstract: This paper proposes a cochlear prosthetic system with an implanted digital signal processor (DSP).This system transmits voice-band signals with a low data rate through the wireless link,free of the data-rate limitation and suitable for future development.By optimizing the speech processing algorithm and the DSP hardware design,the implanted DSP manages to execute the continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) algorithm at a clock frequency of 3MHz and a power consumption of only 1.91mW.With an analytic power-transmission efficiency of the wireless inductive link (40%),the power overhead caused by the implanted DSP is derived as 2.87mW,which is trivial when compared with the power consumption of existing cochlear prosthetic systems (tens of milliwatts).With the DSP implanted,this new system can be easily developed into a fully implanted cochlear prosthesis.

Key words: cochlear prosthesis, low power, algorithm optimization, digital signal processor, power-transmission efficiency