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http://dx.doi.org/10.7776/ASK.2009.28.1.070

Improvement of Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Environments  

Yoon, Jae-Yul (광운대학교 전자공학과)
Kim, Jung-Hoe (삼성전자 멀티미디어랩)
Oh, Eun-Mi (삼성전자 멀티미디어랩)
Park, Ho-Chong (광운대학교 전자공학과)
Publication Information
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea / v.28, no.1, 2009 , pp. 70-76 More about this Journal
Abstract
In speech communications in noisy environments, speech intelligibility is seriously degraded due to the masking effect of ambient noise. In this paper, a new method to improve speech intelligibility in noisy environments is proposed. Based on the perception theory that the temporal envelope plays a major role in determining intelligibility, the proposed method uses a novel operation that enhances the fluctuation of band-wise temporal envelope and also contains pitch enhancement for improving speech naturalness. In addition, a new subjective evaluation scheme employing binaural listening is proposed in order to measure more reliable performance. The subjective performance measured with the proposed scheme shows that the proposed method improves both intelligibility and naturalness in various environments, whereas a function parameter can control the performance trade-off between intelligibility and naturalness.
Keywords
Speech intelligibility; Noisy environments; Temporal envelope; Pitch; Speech quality;
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