On the use of pitch contour of Mandarin speech in text-independent speaker identification

By taking advantage of the four-tone structure in the pitch contour of Mandarin speech, text-independent speaker identification of using orthogonal pitch parameter is described. Slopes, mean, and duration of the pitch contour of each word in an utterance are taken as recognition features. An 85% identification rate is achieved by using parameters of pitch contour only. When incorporating parameters of pitch contour with parameters of vocal tract, this system outperforms that of using parameters of pitch contour or vocal tract only. A recognition rate of 99.2% is reached in such a system.