• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.141-148
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• 2010

In this paper, voice activity detection (VAD) for dual-channel noisy speech recognition is proposed in which spatial cues are employed. In the proposed method, a probability model for speech presence/absence is constructed using spatial cues obtained from dual-channel input signal, and a speech activity interval is detected through this probability model. In particular, spatial cues are composed of interaural time differences and interaural level differences of dual-channel speech signals, and the probability model for speech presence/absence is based on a Gaussian kernel density. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed VAD method, speech recognition is performed for speech segments that only include speech intervals detected by the proposed VAD method. The performance of the proposed method is compared with those of several methods such as an SNR-based method, a direction of arrival (DOA) based method, and a phase vector based method. It is shown from the speech recognition experiments that the proposed method outperforms conventional methods by providing relative word error rates reductions of 11.68%, 41.92%, and 10.15% compared with SNR-based, DOA-based, and phase vector based method, respectively.

• MALSORI
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• no.48
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• pp.107-116
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• 2003

This paper deals with a new parameter for voice detection which is used for many areas of speech engineering such as speech synthesis, speech recognition and speech coding. CV (Coefficient of Variation) of speech spectrum as well as other feature parameters is used for the detection of speech. CV is calculated only in the specific range of speech spectrum. Average magnitude and spectral magnitude are also employed to improve the performance of detector. From the experimental results the proposed voice detector outperformed the conventional energy-based detector in the sense of error measurements.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.924-930
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose a novel approach of low computational complexity to improve the speech quality of the small acoustic equipment in noisy environment. The conventional gain control algorithm suppresses the noise of input signal, and then the part of wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) amplifies the undesired signal. The proposed algorithm controls the gain of hearing aids according to speech present probability by using the output of a voice activity detection (VAD). The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated under various noise conditions by using objective measurement and yields superior results compared with the conventional algorithm.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.396-401
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose a novel voice activity detection (VAD) algorithm to effectively distinguish speech from nonspeech in various noisy environments. The presented VAD utilizes the power spectral deviation (PSD) based on Teager energy (TE) instead of the conventional PSD scheme to improve the performance of decision for speech segments. In addition, the speech absence probability (SAP) is derived in each frequency subband to modify the PSD for further VAD. Performances of the proposed VAD algorithm are evaluated by objective test under various environments and better results compared with the conventional methods are obtained.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.131-137
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• 2013

In this paper we propose an improved voice activity detection (VAD) algorithm using statistical models in the signal subspace domain. A uncorrelated signal subspace is generated using embedded prewhitening technique and the statistical characteristics of the noisy speech and noise are investigated in this domain. According to the characteristics of the signals in the signal subspace, a new statistical VAD method using GGD (Generalized Gaussian Distribution) is proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed GGD-based approach outperforms the Gaussian-based signal subspace method at 0-15 dB SNR simulation conditions.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.97-103
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• 2012

In this paper, we propose a novel voice activity detection (VAD) algorithm to effectively distinguish speech from nonspeech in various noisy environments. Global speech absence probability (GSAP) derived from likelihood ratio (LR) based on the statistical model is widely used as the feature parameter for VAD. However, the feature parameter based on conventional GSAP is not sufficient to distinguish speech from noise at low SNRs (signal-to-noise ratios). The presented VAD algorithm utilizes GSAP based on Teager energy (TE) as the feature parameter to provide the improved performance of decision for speech segments in noisy environment. Performances of the proposed VAD algorithm are evaluated by objective test under various environments and better results compared with the conventional methods are obtained.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.29 no.12C
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• pp.1660-1668
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• 2004

This paper proposes a Voice Activity Detection (VAD) algorithm based on Radial Basis Function (RBF) network using dual threshold. The k-means clustering and Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithm are used to upade the RBF network to the underlying speech condition. The inputs for RBF are the three parameters in a Code Exited Linear Prediction (CELP) coder, which works stably under various background noise levels. Dual hangover threshold applies in BRF-VAD for reducing error, because threshold value has trade off effect in VAD decision. The experimental result show that the proposed VAD algorithm achieves better performance than G.729 Annex B at any noise level.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.194-198
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• 2007

In this paper, we apply a discriminative weight training to a statistical model-based voice activity detection(VAD). In our approach, the VAD decision rule is expressed as the geometric mean of optimally weighted likelihood ratios(LRs) based on a minimum classification error(MCE) method which is different from the previous works in that different weights are assigned to each frequency bin which is considered more realistic. According to the experimental results, the proposed approach is found to be effective for the statistical model-based VAD using the LR test.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.443-449
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• 2008

One of the key issues in practical speech processing is to achieve robust Voice Activity Deteciton (VAD) against the background noise. Most of the statistical model-based approaches have tried to employ equally weighted likelihood ratios (LRs), which, however, deviates from the real observation. Furthermore voice activities in the adjacent frames have strong correlation. In other words, the current frame is highly correlated with previous frame. In this paper, we propose the effective VAD approach based on a minimum classification error (MCE) method which is different from the previous works in that different weights are assigned to both the likelihood ratio on the current frame and the decision statistics of the previous frame.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.169-174
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• 2010

This paper explains end-point detection method for better speech recognition rates. The proposed method determines speech and non-speech region with the entropy and the harmonic detection of speech. The end-point detection using entropy on the speech spectral energy has good performance at the high SNR(SNR 15dB) environments. At the low SNR environment(SNR 0dB), however, the threshold level of speech and noise varies, so the precise end-point detection is difficult. Therefore, this paper introduces the end-point detection methods which uses speech spectral entropy and harmonics. Experiment shows better performance than the conventional entropy methods.