Noise estimation based on time–frequency correlation for speech enhancement

As a fundamental part of speech enhancement, noise estimation is particularly challenging in highly non-stationary noise environments. In this work, we propose an effective algorithm on the basis of the “Improved Minima Controlled Recursive Averaging (IMCRA)” with the objective to improve the performance of noise estimation. The main contributions of this work are: (i) in the algorithm, a rough decision about speech presence is proposed by calculating the autocorrelation and cross-channel correlation of the T–F (Time–Frequency) units; (ii) with this decision, we refine the smoothing parameters for the smoothing of noisy power spectrum and the recursive averaging in noise spectrum estimation as well as the weighting factor for the a priori SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) estimation in the IMCRA; (iii) we improve the search of local minima during spectral bursts by adding a minimum search with a shorter window. Extensive experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithm. The experimental results illustrate that, compared with the IMCRA, the proposed approach significantly improves the accuracy of noise spectrum estimation and the quality of enhanced speech in the typical noise situations.