News

Noise-reduced "jawbone" Bluetooth - but will it work in the wind?

by Guy J Kewney | posted on 23 December 2006

American mobile carrier Cingular has got very excited about its new Bluetooth headset, announcing it "in time for Christmas" - and has successfully generated an astonishing amount of hype. Surprisingly, there is no mention of the number one mobile phone vulnerability: wind noise.

The Jawbone device would appear to work in the same manner as many noise-reducing headsets for high fidelity audio; a microphone samples the surrounding noise, and "subtracts" the background from the signal you want (your voice, in this case).

Here's the relevant bit from Cingular's press announcement

The Noise Shield technology was originally developed by Aliph for DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to enhance communications in the most hostile and rugged environments. This technology includes an intelligent system of sensors and software, which continuously adjusts—at a rate of 500 times per second—to improve audio quality based on what it knows about the environment. In doing this, the Jawbone headset will:

Identify and isolate your speech: Jawbone is the only headset that has a proprietary voice activity sensor. Its ability to determine precisely when you are speaking is what drives the headset's superior sound quality. Unlike other headsets, Jawbone can easily separate your speech from other sounds nearby.

Subtract the unwanted noise: Jawbone's proprietary software continuously samples the sounds in your environment, and then subtracts those sounds from your speech signal. This allows you to speak normally in any environment while still being heard clearly when placing calls.

Automatically enhance your audio: Jawbone constantly adapts, allowing you to hear your caller better by boosting the frequencies that increase voice intelligibility to stand out over your environment.

"We endeavored to build the first headset all users will actually want to wear," said Hosain Rahman, Aliph CEO and co-founder. "We've always led the industry from a technology perspective, now we've integrated that adaptive technology into a Bluetooth headset that is simple, intuitive, and easy to use – the total product experience has been designed around how consumers actually use wearable technology. As an innovator in wireless communications, Cingular is the perfect partner to bring the new Jawbone to market."

Most mobile phone users will know that in fact, noisy traffic is not a major problem for the phone user. What stops conversation absolutely dead, is a breeze of more than about five miles per hour; the wind makes a roaring sound in the microphone.

Motorola has tried to solve this problem for motorcycle users, building a Bluetooth microphone into a crash helmet. Not everybody will want this solution, of course.

The designers have a great demo of the Jawbone device working while the wearer is surrounded by industrial equipment or traffic. If they had a solution to wind noise, it's rather hard to imagine why they might forget to mention this... so we'll have to assume that when the wind blows, it blows your words away just as it always does on any exposed microphone.

The other sad fact is that it's a single-ear job.

These days, Bluetooth headsets for MP3 players are common, and much in demand. But there's a more important point: if you're in a noisy environment, it's nice to know that the person you're calling can hear you, sure; but what about you hearing them? For that to work, you really need noise-cancelling headphones - and Jawbone claims that it does help, but with only one ear working, that help is going to be limited.