Speech Communication I (2012-present)

by Pejman Mowlaee

The enormous advances in digital signal processing (DSP) technology have contributed to the wide dissemination and success of speech communication devices ranging in a variety of technologies including mobile telephones (GSM and UMTS ), digital hearing aids, and automated human to machine interfaces for commercial purposes. In all such application, digital speech transmission plays the key role. As some important challenges, there an ongoing demand on having high quality speech transmission in all current and next generation communication networks.

Enhancement, coding and error concealment techniques improve the transmitted speech signal at all stages of the transmission chain, from the acoustic front-end to the sound reproduction at the receiver . Advanced speech processing algorithms help to mitigate a number of physical and technological limitations such as background noise, bandwidth restrictions, shortage of radio frequencies, and transmission errors. Various demos about different speech application are available here in [9].

Current Course on _Speech Communication I,_provides a single-source, comprehensive guide to the fundamental issues, algorithms, standards, and trends in speech signal processing and speech communication technology. The textbook material used in this course is [1]. A list of topics covered in this course is given below:

• Fundamentals of speech signal processing (Ch.2)
• Overview of digital signal processing for speech signals + Cepstrum (Ch.3)
• Filterbank design (Ch.4)
• Statistical signal processing (Ch.5)
• Linear prediction (Ch.6)
• Vector quantization (Ch.7)
• Speech coding, including principle of previous technologies and more advanced speech coders used in GSM and UMTS (Ch.8)
• Artificial bandwidth extension (Ch. 10)
• Single-channel and dual-channel noise reduction systems, noise estimation (Ch.11)
• Fundamental frequency estimation (Ch. 12)
• Harmonic and sinusoidal model of speech signals (Ch. 13)

The course is accompanied by Matlab-oriented slides available in the materials. Also, we recommend the following pages for MATLAB toolboxes available for speech signal processing:

• VOICEBOX: Speech processing toolbox for MATLAB (Prof. Mike Brookes)
• SparkNG: MATLAB realtime speech tools and voice production tools (Prof. Hideki Kawahara) [ppt]
• COVAREP: A Cooperative Voice Analysis Repository for Speech Technologies (Dr. Degottex, Kane, Drugman, Raitio, Schrerer) [ppt]
• PhaseLab: Phase-aware signal processing in speech communication [4] (demos in [9]).
• LabRosa: Matlab Audio Processing Examples (Prof. Dan Ellis)
• Realtime spectrogram
• Realtime Vocal Tract Shape Visualizer
• Realtime FFT analyzer

Reference:

[1] R. Martin, and P. Vary, Digital Speech Transmission: Enhancement, Coding and Error Concealment, John Wiley & Sons, 2006 [Overview

website].

[2] T. F. Quatieri, Discrete-Time Speech Signal Processing: Principles and Practice, Prentice Hall, 2001 [Supplementary material].

[3] P. C. Loizou: Speech enhancement: theory and practice, University of California, CRC Press, 2007 [website

Lab

2nd edition].

[4] P. Mowlaee, Phase-Aware Signal Processing in Speech Communication: Theory and Practice, John Wiley & Sons, 2016 [Demo

Toolbox

pdf].

[5] P. Vary, U. Heute, and W. Hess: Digitale Sprachsignalverarbeitung. Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner 1998.

[6] W.B Kleijn and K.K. Paliwal (eds.): Speech Coding and Synthesis. Amsterdam: Elsevier 1995.

[7] D. O’Shaughnessy: Speech Communications - Human and Machine. New York: IEEE Press 2000 (2nd ed.).

[8] R. Martin, U. Heute, C. Antweiler, Advances in Digital Speech Transmission, John Wiley & Sons, 2008 [website].

[9] P. Mowlaee, Demo audio examples for speech communication course, [Online Available].

Scheduled date

Slides

E-learning materials

see also speech communication laboratory , speech communication II , Advanced Signal Processing