Detection of multi-tones in white and colored noise with application to asthmatic wheezes detection

The signal tonality detection is a common problem in many different technical fields, e.g. radar, sonar, perceptual audio encoders, birds recognition etc. Wheezes recognition at asthma patients is another example, which we are interested in, where the multi-tone signal is to be detected in colored noise of normal breath. The spectrum of the typical breath decreases roughly exponentially with frequency and this situation can cause serious problems for tonality descriptors designed for the white noise background. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the impact of spectrum shape of background noise (its colority) on the detection of multi-tonal sinusoidal signal lying in a specified range of frequency.