• ETRI Journal
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.366-375
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• 2016

This paper describes an algorithm to suppress composite noise in a two-microphone speech enhancement system for robust hands-free speech communication. The proposed algorithm has four stages. The first stage estimates the power spectral density of the residual stationary noise, which is based on the detection of nonstationary signal-dominant time-frequency bins (TFBs) at the generalized sidelobe canceller output. Second, speech-dominant TFBs are identified among the previously detected nonstationary signal-dominant TFBs, and power spectral densities of speech and residual nonstationary noise are estimated. In the final stage, the bin-wise output signal-to-noise ratio is obtained with these power estimates and a Wiener post-filter is constructed to attenuate the residual noise. Compared to the conventional beamforming and post-filter algorithms, the proposed speech enhancement algorithm shows significant performance improvement in terms of perceptual evaluation of speech quality.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.784-788
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• 2008

In this research, we propose a remote speech input unit, a new method of user-friendly speech input in speech recognition system. We focused the user friendliness on hands-free and microphone independence in speech recognition applications. Our module adopts two algorithms, the automatic speech detection and speech enhancement based on the microphone array-based beamforming method. In the performance evaluation of speech detection, within-200msec accuracy with respect to the manually detected positions is about 97percent under the noise environments of 25dB of the SNR. The microphone array-based speech enhancement using the delay-and-sum beamforming algorithm shows about 6dB of maximum SNR gain over a single microphone and more than 12% of error reduction rate in speech recognition.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.772-782
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• 2014

Two-microphone binary mask speech enhancement (2mBMSE) has been of particular interest in recent literature and has shown promising results. Current 2mBMSE systems rely on spatial cues of speech and noise sources. Although these cues are helpful for directional noise sources, they lose their efficiency in diffuse noise fields. We propose a new system that is effective in both directional and diffuse noise conditions. The system exploits two features. The first determines whether a given time-frequency (T-F) unit of the input spectrum is dominated by a diffuse or directional source. A diffuse signal is certainly a noise signal, but a directional signal could correspond to a noise or speech source. The second feature discriminates between T-F units dominated by speech or directional noise signals. Speech enhancement is performed using a binary mask, calculated based on the proposed features. In both directional and diffuse noise fields, the proposed system segregates speech T-F units with hit rates above 85%. It outperforms previous solutions in terms of signal-to-noise ratio and perceptual evaluation of speech quality improvement, especially in diffuse noise conditions.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2E
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• pp.38-46
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• 1998

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.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.28-32
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• 2009

This paper compares two speech estimators under a generalized Gamma distribution for DFT-based single-microphone speech enhancement methods. For the speech enhancement, the noise estimation based on recursive averaging spectral values by spectral minimum noise is applied to two speech estimators based on the generalized Gamma distribution using $\kappa$=1 or $\kappa$=2. The performance of two speech enhancement algorithms is measured by recognition accuracy of automatic speech recognition(ASR) in car noisy environment.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.30B no.10
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• pp.35-41
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• 1993

In this paper, a new speech enhancement method for speech signal corrupted by environmental noise is proposed. Two signals are obtained from the microphone and from the accelerometer attached to the neck, respectively. Since two signals are generated from same source signal, both signals are closely correlated. And environmental noise has no effect on the accelerometer signal. The speech enhancement system identifies the optimum linear system between two signals on the basis of the dependence between the signals. The enhanced speech can be obtained by filtering the noise-free accelerometer signal. Since the characteristcs of the speech signal and environmental noise are changing with time, adaptive filtering system has to be used for characterizing the time-varing system. Simulation results show 7dB enhancement with 0dB speech signal level relative to the white noise.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2004

In this paper, we present a speech enhancement method as a pre-processor for voice commander under car environment. For the friendly and safe use of voice commander in a running car, non-stationary audio signals such as music and non-candidate speech should be reduced. Ow technique is a two microphone-based one. It consists of two parts Blind Source Separation (BSS) and Kalman filtering. Firstly, BSS is operated as a spatial filter to deal with non-stationary signals and then car noise is reduced by kalman filtering as a temporal filter. Algorithm Performance is tested for speech recognition. And the results show that our two microphone-based technique can be a good candidate to a voice commander.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.95-102
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• 2009

In this paper, an efficient target speech detection algorithm is proposed for the performance improvement of multi-input speech enhancement. Using the normalized cross correlation value between two selected channels, the proposed algorithm estimates the probabilistic distribution function of the value from the pure noise interval. Then, log-likelihoods are calculated with the function and the normalized cross correlation value to detect the target speech interval precisely. The detection results are applied to the generalized sidelobe canceller-based algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the speech recognition performance and the signal-to-noise ratios.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.732-743
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• 2007

Background noise is one of the major complaints of not only hearing impaired persons but also normal listeners. This paper describes the results of two experiments in which speech recognition performance was determined for listeners with normal hearing and sensorineural hearing loss in noise environment. First, we compared speech enhancement algorithms by evaluation speech recognition ability in various speech-to-noise ratios and types of noise. Next, speech enhancement algorithms by reducing background noise were presented and evaluated to improve speech intelligibility for sensorineural hearing impairment listeners. We tested three noise reduction methods using single-microphone, such as spectrum subtraction and companding, Wiener filter method, and maximum likelihood envelop estimation. Their responses in background noise were investigated and compared with those by the speech enhancement algorithm that presented in this paper. The methods improved speech recognition test score for the sensorineural hearing impaired listeners, but not for normal listeners. The results suggest the speech enhancement algorithm with the loudness compression can improve speech intelligibility for listeners with sensorineural hearing loss.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.38-44
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• 1999

In this paper, a new spectral subtraction technique with two microphone inputs is proposed. In conventional spectral subtraction using a single microphone, the averaged noise spectrum is subtracted from the observed short-time input spectrum. This results in reduction of mean value of noise spectrum only, the component varying around the mean value remaining intact. In the method proposed in this paper, the short-time noise spectrum excluding the speech component is estimated by introducing the blocking matrix used in Griffiths-Jim-type adaptive beamformer with two microphone inputs, combined with the spectral compensation technique. A simulation was conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method.