976 research outputs found
New Features Using Robust MVDR Spectrum of Filtered Autocorrelation Sequence for Robust Speech Recognition
This paper presents a novel noise-robust feature
extraction method for speech recognition using the robust perceptual minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) spectrum of temporally filtered autocorrelation sequence. The perceptual
MVDR spectrum of the filtered short-time autocorrelation
sequence can reduce the effects of residue of the nonstationary
additive noise which remains after filtering the autocorrelation.
To achieve a more robust front-end, we also modify the robust
distortionless constraint of the MVDR spectral estimation method
via revised weighting of the subband power spectrum values
based on the sub-band signal to noise ratios (SNRs), which adjusts
it to the new proposed approach. This new function allows the
components of the input signal at the frequencies least affected by
noise to pass with larger weights and attenuates more effectively
the noisy and undesired components. This modification results
in reduction of the noise residuals of the estimated spectrum
from the filtered autocorrelation sequence, thereby leading to
a more robust algorithm. Our proposed method, when evaluated
on Aurora 2 task for recognition purposes, outperformed all Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) as the baseline, relative autocorrelation sequence MFCC (RAS-MFCC), and the MVDR-based features in several different noisy conditions
Role of Spectral Peaks in Autocoorelation Domain for Robust Speech Recognition
This paper presents a new front-end for robust speech recognition. This new front-end scenario focuses on the spectral features of the filtered speech signals in the autocorrelation domain. The autocorrelation domain is well known for its pole preserving and noise separation properties. In this paper we will use the autocorrelation domain as an appropriate candidate for robust feature extraction. The proposed method introduces a novel representation of speech for the cases where the speech signal is corrupted by additive noises. In this method, the speech features are computed by reducing additive noise effects via an initial filtering stage, followed by the extraction of autocorrelation spectrum peaks. Robust features based on theses peaks are derived by assuming that the corrupting noise is stationary in nature. A task of speaker-independent isolated-word recognition is used to demonstrate the efficiency of these robust features. The cases of white noise and colored noise such as factory, babble and F16 are tested. Experimental results show significant improvement in comparison to the results obtained using traditional front end methods. Further enhancement has been done by applying cepstral mean normalization (CMN) on the above extracted features
Wavelet-based techniques for speech recognition
In this thesis, new wavelet-based techniques have been developed for the
extraction of features from speech signals for the purpose of automatic speech
recognition (ASR). One of the advantages of the wavelet transform over the short
time Fourier transform (STFT) is its capability to process non-stationary signals.
Since speech signals are not strictly stationary the wavelet transform is a better
choice for time-frequency transformation of these signals. In addition it has
compactly supported basis functions, thereby reducing the amount of
computation as opposed to STFT where an overlapping window is needed. [Continues.
Investigation of the impact of high frequency transmitted speech on speaker recognition
Thesis (MScEng)--Stellenbosch University, 2002.Some digitised pages may appear illegible due to the condition of the original hard copy.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Speaker recognition systems have evolved to a point where near perfect performance can be
obtained under ideal conditions, even if the system must distinguish between a large number
of speakers. Under adverse conditions, such as when high noise levels are present or when the
transmission channel deforms the speech, the performance is often less than satisfying.
This project investigated the performance of a popular speaker recognition system, that use
Gaussian mixture models, on speech transmitted over a high frequency channel. Initial experiments
demonstrated very unsatisfactory results for the base line system.
We investigated a number of robust techniques. We implemented and applied some of them in
an attempt to improve the performance of the speaker recognition systems. The techniques we
tested showed only slight improvements.
We also investigates the effects of a high frequency channel and single sideband modulation on
the speech features of speech processing systems. The effects that can deform the features, and
therefore reduce the performance of speech systems, were identified.
One of the effects that can greatly affect the performance of a speech processing system is
noise. We investigated some speech enhancement techniques and as a result we developed a
new statistical based speech enhancement technique that employs hidden Markov models to
represent the clean speech process.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Sprekerherkenning-stelsels het 'n punt bereik waar nabyaan perfekte resultate verwag kan word
onder ideale kondisies, selfs al moet die stelsel tussen 'n groot aantal sprekers onderskei. Wanneer
nie-ideale kondisies, soos byvoorbeeld hoë ruisvlakke of 'n transmissie kanaal wat die
spraak vervorm, teenwoordig is, is die resultate gewoonlik nie bevredigend nie.
Die projek ondersoek die werksverrigting van 'n gewilde sprekerherkenning-stelsel, wat gebruik
maak van Gaussiese mengselmodelle, op spraak wat oor 'n hoë frekwensie transmissie
kanaal gestuur is. Aanvanklike eksperimente wat gebruik maak van 'n basiese stelsel het nie
goeie resultate opgelewer nie.
Ons het 'n aantal robuuste tegnieke ondersoek en 'n paar van hulle geïmplementeer en getoets
in 'n poging om die resultate van die sprekerherkenning-stelsel te verbeter. Die tegnieke wat
ons getoets het, het net geringe verbetering getoon.
Die studie het ook die effekte wat die hoë-frekwensie kanaal en enkel-syband modulasie op
spraak kenmerkvektore, ondersoek. Die effekte wat die spraak kenmerkvektore kan vervorm en
dus die werkverrigting van spraak stelsels kan verlaag, is geïdentifiseer.
Een van die effekte wat 'n groot invloed op die werkverrigting van spraakstelsels het, is ruis.
Ons het spraak verbeterings metodes ondersoek en dit het gelei tot die ontwikkeling van 'n
statisties gebaseerde spraak verbeteringstegniek wat gebruik maak van verskuilde Markov modelle
om die skoon spraakproses voor te stel
Improving the performance of MFCC for Persian robust speech recognition
The Mel Frequency cepstral coefficients are the most widely used feature in speech recognition but they are very sensitive to noise. In this paper to achieve a satisfactorily performance in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) applications we introduce a noise robust new set of MFCC vector estimated through following steps. First, spectral mean normalization is a pre-processing which applies to the noisy original speech signal. The pre-emphasized original speech segmented into overlapping time frames, then it is windowed by a modified hamming window .Higher order autocorrelation coefficients are extracted. The next step is to eliminate the lower order of the autocorrelation coefficients. The consequence pass from FFT block and then power spectrum of output is calculated. A Gaussian shape filter bank is applied to the results. Logarithm and two compensator blocks form which one is mean subtraction and the other one are root block applied to the results and DCT transformation is the last step. We use MLP neural network to evaluate the performance of proposed MFCC method and to classify the results. Some speech recognition experiments for various tasks indicate that the proposed algorithm is more robust than traditional ones in noisy condition
Temporal contextual descriptors and applications to emotion analysis.
The current trends in technology suggest that the next generation of services and devices allows smarter customization and automatic context recognition. Computers learn the behavior of the users and can offer them customized services depending on the context, location, and preferences. One of the most important challenges in human-machine interaction is the proper understanding of human emotions by machines and automated systems. In the recent years, the progress made in machine learning and pattern recognition led to the development of algorithms that are able to learn the detection and identification of human emotions from experience. These algorithms use different modalities such as image, speech, and physiological signals to analyze and learn human emotions. In many settings, the vocal information might be more available than other modalities due to widespread of voice sensors in phones, cars, and computer systems in general. In emotion analysis from speech, an audio utterance is represented by an ordered (in time) sequence of features or a multivariate time series. Typically, the sequence is further mapped into a global descriptor representative of the entire utterance/sequence. This descriptor is used for classification and analysis. In classic approaches, statistics are computed over the entire sequence and used as a global descriptor. This often results in the loss of temporal ordering from the original sequence. Emotion is a succession of acoustic events. By discarding the temporal ordering of these events in the mapping, the classic approaches cannot detect acoustic patterns that lead to a certain emotion. In this dissertation, we propose a novel feature mapping framework. The proposed framework maps temporally ordered sequence of acoustic features into data-driven global descriptors that integrate the temporal information from the original sequence. The framework contains three mapping algorithms. These algorithms integrate the temporal information implicitly and explicitly in the descriptor\u27s representation. In the rst algorithm, the Temporal Averaging Algorithm, we average the data temporally using leaky integrators to produce a global descriptor that implicitly integrates the temporal information from the original sequence. In order to integrate the discrimination between classes in the mapping, we propose the Temporal Response Averaging Algorithm which combines the temporal averaging step of the previous algorithm and unsupervised learning to produce data driven temporal contextual descriptors. In the third algorithm, we use the topology preserving property of the Self-Organizing Maps and the continuous nature of speech to map a temporal sequence into an ordered trajectory representing the behavior over time of the input utterance on a 2-D map of emotions. The temporal information is integrated explicitly in the descriptor which makes it easier to monitor emotions in long speeches. The proposed mapping framework maps speech data of different length to the same equivalent representation which alleviates the problem of dealing with variable length temporal sequences. This is advantageous in real time setting where the size of the analysis window can be variable. Using the proposed feature mapping framework, we build a novel data-driven speech emotion detection and recognition system that indexes speech databases to facilitate the classification and retrieval of emotions. We test the proposed system using two datasets. The first corpus is acted. We showed that the proposed mapping framework outperforms the classic approaches while providing descriptors that are suitable for the analysis and visualization of humans’ emotions in speech data. The second corpus is an authentic dataset. In this dissertation, we evaluate the performances of our system using a collection of debates. For that purpose, we propose a novel debate collection that is one of the first initiatives in the literature. We show that the proposed system is able to learn human emotions from debates
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