US 5,721,783 · Granted 1998-02-24

The 1995 Hearing Aid That Went Wireless Before AirPods

Imagine a hearing aid so small it fits deep in your ear canal, but it talks wirelessly to a processor unit hidden under your shirt that does the heavy lifting of amplifying and adjusting sound. This patent uses radar-like technology to let the tiny earpiece and the remote box communicate without wires, solving the problem of how to keep a hearing aid small without draining its battery.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a hearing aid system where a miniature earpiece with a microphone communicates wirelessly with a separate remote processor unit using microwave or radar-based signals. What's protected here is the specific architecture: sound gets picked up in the ear canal, sent wirelessly to the remote box for processing and amplification, and then the processed signal comes back to the earpiece. The use of radar-like interrogator-and-transponder design to eliminate the need for a microwave oscillator inside the tiny earpiece is also covered.

Why it matters

This patent anticipated the idea of splitting audio processing between a tiny wearable and a remote device decades before true wireless earbuds became mainstream. By shifting power-hungry processing away from the earpiece itself, it made it possible to build a hearing aid that was genuinely small enough to hide in the ear canal while still delivering sophisticated audio enhancement. The radar-based link design was clever engineering that reduced the size and battery drain of the earpiece component.

Real-world use

When a hearing aid wearer adjusts volume or switches between listening modes using a remote control tucked in a pocket, they're using the wireless link this patent describes to send commands from the processor to the earpiece.

Original USPTO abstract

A hearing aid or audio communication system includes an earpiece (10) that can be hidden in the ear canal, and which communicates wirelessly with a remote processor unit, or RPU (16), that enhances audio signals and can be concealed under clothing. Sounds from the environment are picked up by a microphone (12) in the earpiece and sent with other information over a two-way wireless link (17) to the RPU (16). The wireless link (17) uses microwaves for component miniaturization. Furthermore, use of radar technology to implement the wireless link (17), with an RPU (16) interrogator and earpiece (10) transponder, reduces earpiece size and power, as no microwave oscillator is needed in the earpiece (10). Optional secondary wireless link circuitry (19) can be used between the RPU (16) and a cellular telephone system or other sources of information. Electronic voice recognition and response can control system operation.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,721,783
Filing date: 1995-06-07
Grant date: 1998-02-24
Assignee: Anderson; James C.
Inventor(s): ANDERSON; JAMES C.
CPC class: H04R25/00

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