International Journal of Image, Graphics and Signal Processing (IJIGSP)
IJIGSP Vol. 7, No. 6, 8 May 2015
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Dominant Frequency Enhancement of Speech Signal to Improve Intelligibility and Quality
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Author(s)
Premananda B.S.
1,*
Uma B.V.
2
Index Terms
Dominant, Near-end noise, Psychoacoustics, Speech enhancement, Speech intelligibility, Speech quality
Abstract
In mobile devices, perceived speech signal deteriorates significantly in the presence of near-end noise as the signal arrives directly at the listener's ears in a noisy environment. There is an inherent need to increase the clarity and quality of the received speech signal in noisier environment. It is accomplished by incorporating speech enhancement algorithms at the receiver end. The objective is to improve the intelligibility and quality of the speech signal by dynamically enhancing the speech signal when the near-end noise dominates. This paper proposes a speech enhancement approaches by inculcating the threshold of hearing and auditory masking properties of the human ear. Incorporating the masking properties, the speech samples that are audible can be obtained. In low SNR environments, selective audible samples can be enhanced to improve the clarity of the signal rather than enhancing every loud sample. Intelligibility and quality of the enhanced speech signal are measured using Speech Intelligibility Index and Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality. Experimental results connote the intelligibility and quality improvement of the speech signal with the proposed method over the unprocessed far-end speech signal. This approach is efficient in overcoming the deterioration of speech signals in a noisy environment.
Cite This Paper
Premananda B.S., Uma B.V.,"Dominant Frequency Enhancement of Speech Signal to Improve Intelligibility and Quality", IJIGSP, vol.7, no.6, pp.29-37, 2015. DOI: 10.5815/ijigsp.2015.06.04
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