A User-friendly Remote Speech Input Method in Spontaneous Speech Recognition System

In this paper, we propose a remote speech input device, a new method of user-friendly speech input in spontaneous speech recognition system. We focus the user friendliness on hands-free and microphone independence in speech recognition applications. Our method adopts two algorithms, the automatic speech detection and the microphone array delay-and-sum beamforming (DSBF)-based speech enhancement. The automatic speech detection algorithm is composed of two stages; the detection of speech and nonspeech using the pitch information for the detected speech portion candidate. The DSBF algorithm adopts the time domain cross-correlation method as its time delay estimation. In the performance evaluation, the speech detection algorithm shows within-200 ms start point accuracy of 93%, 99% under 15dB, 20dB, and 25dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments, respectively and those for the end point are 72%, 89%, and 93% for the corresponding environments, respectively. The classification of speech and nonspeech for the start point detected region of input signal is performed by the pitch information-base method. The percentages of correct classification for speech and nonspeech input are 99% and 90%, respectively. The eight microphone array-based speech enhancement using the DSBF algorithm shows the maximum SNR gaing of 6dB over a single microphone and the error reductin of more than 15% in the spontaneous speech recognition domain.