Title :
A maximum log-likelihood approach to voice activity detection
Author :
Gauci, Oliver ; Debono, Carl J. ; Micallef, Paul
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Commun. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Malta, Msida
Abstract :
Modern voice activity detection (VAD) algorithms must achieve reliable operation at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). Although a lot of research has been performed to solve this issue, the operation of existing VAD algorithms is still far away from ideal. In this paper, we present a novel VAD algorithm, in which we apply the Teager energy cepstral coefficients, to obtain a noise robust feature extraction method, together with Gaussian mixture models that serve for the classification of speech and silence periods. In the suggested solution, the threshold method used in many noise robust VAD algorithms is eliminated, thus favoring its use in real applications. The performance of this novel algorithm was tested under known and unknown noise statistics, and compared to a statistical model-based approach found in literature. The results obtained show that the proposed solution achieves better accuracy and significantly reduces clipping of speech periods; thus achieving superior signal quality.
Keywords :
Gaussian noise; feature extraction; maximum likelihood detection; signal classification; speech processing; statistical analysis; Gaussian mixture model; Teager energy cepstral coefficient; VAD algorithm; feature extraction method; maximum log-likelihood approach; noise statistics; speech classification; voice activity detection; Background noise; Feature extraction; Gaussian noise; Noise robustness; Nonlinear distortion; Signal to noise ratio; Speech coding; Speech enhancement; Testing; Working environment noise; Gaussian mixture models; Teager operator; Voice activity detection;
Conference_Titel :
Communications, Control and Signal Processing, 2008. ISCCSP 2008. 3rd International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
St Julians
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-1687-5
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-4244-1688-2
DOI :
10.1109/ISCCSP.2008.4537255