In hazardous environments such as large fire breakouts in buildings, fire fighters face a very daunting task of trying to extinguish fires quickly and saving as many lives as possible. With all the screams, panic and chaos, effective communication between fire fighters is crucial to ensure that efforts can be properly coordinated so that the situation can be put under control in the shortest possible time.

In BITwave, we have developed a wireless headset solution that enables fire fighters to communicate with each other in any situation. This solution is fully embedded within the fireman helmet. With our leading edge wear array and noise suppression technology, all environmental noise is suppressed and only crystal clear speech is transmitted to other firemen within its network.

Facemasks are often used by firefighters, lab workers, members of the military and others to provide oxygen or filter contaminants when working in potentially harmful environments or contagious substances and diseases. Such a mask needs to form an airtight seal with the face of the wearer. This can make it difficult for the wearer to communicate intelligibly through the facemask.

One solution might be to include a microphones within the inside compartment of the facemask for transmitting sound out of the facemask. However, this presents difficulties. If wires are used to transmit the sound from the microphone to outside of the facemask then the wires might break the seal between the facemask and the face of the wearer. Even if the seal is maintained, extra wires can be uncomfortable or get in the way.

The poor acoustic properties within the inside compartment of a facemask also presents problems for using a microphone inside the compartment. There is muffling as well as many reflected sound waves within the compartment. There is also breathing noise within the facemask, causing additional difficulty in picking-up and processing the signal.

In BITwave, we have developed a patent pending seamless full-duplex digital communication for full-face mask. It provides a seamless communication while maintaining airtight seal protection of full-face mask. With advance wireless technology, microphones signal embedded in the mask are transmitted wirelessly to an external name card size digital processing board for further processing to enhance the communication quality. With the help of patented microphone array signal processing technique, it also filters out the breathing noise and muffled sound created in a small-enclosed space.