Mathematical models of vocal tract with distributed sources

Frequency domain models for the vocal tract with distributed sources are introduced. Pressure and volume velocity distributed sources are modeled within incremental lossy cylindrical pipes in a manner similar to that of modeling electrical components. Equations for transmission matrices of uniform-area vocal tract sections with distributed sources are derived. Transfer functions for pressure and volume velocity at various segments of the vocal tract are computed. Comparison of distributed source models with point source models reveal several improvements on the traditional lumped source modeling method and shows that the effects of the finite impedance constriction and back cavity cannot be adequately modeled using point sources. The distributed source vocal tract framework is important for building articulatory and acoustic models for fricative sounds and other phoneme categories. The paper provides such a mathematical framework for the first time.