82,586 research outputs found
Block-Online Multi-Channel Speech Enhancement Using DNN-Supported Relative Transfer Function Estimates
This work addresses the problem of block-online processing for multi-channel
speech enhancement. Such processing is vital in scenarios with moving speakers
and/or when very short utterances are processed, e.g., in voice assistant
scenarios. We consider several variants of a system that performs beamforming
supported by DNN-based voice activity detection (VAD) followed by
post-filtering. The speaker is targeted through estimating relative transfer
functions between microphones. Each block of the input signals is processed
independently in order to make the method applicable in highly dynamic
environments. Owing to the short length of the processed block, the statistics
required by the beamformer are estimated less precisely. The influence of this
inaccuracy is studied and compared to the processing regime when recordings are
treated as one block (batch processing). The experimental evaluation of the
proposed method is performed on large datasets of CHiME-4 and on another
dataset featuring moving target speaker. The experiments are evaluated in terms
of objective and perceptual criteria (such as signal-to-interference ratio
(SIR) or perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ), respectively).
Moreover, word error rate (WER) achieved by a baseline automatic speech
recognition system is evaluated, for which the enhancement method serves as a
front-end solution. The results indicate that the proposed method is robust
with respect to short length of the processed block. Significant improvements
in terms of the criteria and WER are observed even for the block length of 250
ms.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables. Modified version of the article
accepted for publication in IET Signal Processing journal. Original results
unchanged, additional experiments presented, refined discussion and
conclusion
Low-complexity medium access control protocols for QoS support in third-generation radio access networks
One approach to maximizing the efficiency of
medium access control (MAC) on the uplink in a future wideband
code-division multiple-access (WCDMA)-based third-generation
radio access network, and hence maximize spectral efficiency,
is to employ a low-complexity distributed scheduling control
approach. The maximization of spectral efficiency in third-generation
radio access networks is complicated by the need to
provide bandwidth-on-demand to diverse services characterized
by diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements in an interference
limited environment. However, the ability to exploit the full
potential of resource allocation algorithms in third-generation
radio access networks has been limited by the absence of a metric
that captures the two-dimensional radio resource requirement,
in terms of power and bandwidth, in the third-generation radio
access network environment, where different users may have
different signal-to-interference ratio requirements. This paper
presents a novel resource metric as a solution to this fundamental
problem. Also, a novel deadline-driven backoff procedure has
been presented as the backoff scheme of the proposed distributed
scheduling MAC protocols to enable the efficient support of
services with QoS imposed delay constraints without the need
for centralized scheduling. The main conclusion is that low-complexity
distributed scheduling control strategies using overload
avoidance/overload detection can be designed using the proposed
resource metric to give near optimal performance and thus maintain
a high spectral efficiency in third-generation radio access
networks and that importantly overload detection is superior to
overload avoidance
- …