A TRANSDUCER/EQUIPMENT SYSTEM FOR CAPTURING SPEECH INFORMATION FOR SUBSEQUENT PROCESSING BY COMPUTER SYSTEMS T-102-93

THE OBJECTIVE IS THE EXPLORATORY RESEARCH TO PARAMETERIZE THE SPEECH SIGNAL AND PROVIDE MEASREMENTS WHICH MAXIMIZE THE SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY AND TALKER-IDENTIFICATION WHILE MINIMIZING THE EFFECTS OF NOISE AND INTERFERENCE. PERFORMANCE OF SPEECH TRANSUDCERS AND NOISE CANCELLING SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN BENCHMARKED SIGNIFICANTLY FOR APPLICATIONS UNDER CONTROLLED CONDITIONS. THIS BASIC RESEARCH WILL INVESTIGATE NEW SIGNAL PROCESSING AND SPEECH PARAMETERIZATION TECHNIQUES FOR MORE ROBUST PERFORMANCE IN NOISE CONDITIONS. ADDITIONALLY, THE EFFECTS OF CHANNEL MEDIA INTERFERENCE WILL BE QUANTIFIED AND SUPERIMPOSED FOR SEVERAL EXPECTED APPLICATIONS TO EVALUATE THE ENHANCED PERFORMANCE DERIVED FROM THESE NEW CONCEPTS. THE NEW ALGORITHMS AND NOISE/INTERFERENCE ABATEMENT TECHNIQUES WILL DEMONSTRATE IMMUNITY TO A BROAD RANGE OF ACOUSTIC NOISE AND TRANSMISSION MEDIA CONDITIONS. THE TECHNICAL APPROACH CONSISTS OF TWO PARALLEL ACTIVITIES WHICH INDIVIDUALLY FOCUS ON: 1) THE IDENTIFICATION OF NOVEL WAYS TO ISOLATE THE SIGNAL FROM THE NOISE TO IMPROVE SPPECH INTELLIGIBILITY AND SPEAKER IDENTIFICATION SCORES, AND 2) DEVELOPMENT OF PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKS TO DEMONSTRATE THE IMPROVEMENTS IN SPEECH RECOGNITION UNDER NOISY ACOUSTIC CONDITIONS AND OVER CHANNELS THAT FILTER OR OTHERWISE INTERFERE WITH SPEECH SIGNAL QUALITY FEATURES.