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EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing
EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing Cover Image
  • Research Article
  • Open Access

An FFT-Based Companding Front End for Noise-Robust Automatic Speech Recognition

  • 1Email author,
  • 2,
  • 1 and
  • 2
EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing20072007:065420

https://doi.org/10.1155/2007/65420

©  Bhiksha Raj et al. 2007

  • Received: 29 November 2006
  • Accepted: 23 April 2007
  • Published:

Abstract

We describe an FFT-based companding algorithm for preprocessing speech before recognition. The algorithm mimics tone-to-tone suppression and masking in the auditory system to improve automatic speech recognition performance in noise. Moreover, it is also very computationally efficient and suited to digital implementations due to its use of the FFT. In an automotive digits recognition task with the CU-Move database recorded in real environmental noise, the algorithm improves the relative word error by 12.5% at -5 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and by 6.2% across all SNRs (-5 dB SNR to +5 dB SNR). In the Aurora-2 database recorded with artificially added noise in several environments, the algorithm improves the relative word error rate in almost all situations.

Keywords

  • Error Rate
  • Acoustics
  • Recognition Task
  • Recognition Performance
  • Auditory System

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Authors’ Affiliations

(1)
Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), 201 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA
(2)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

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Copyright

© Bhiksha Raj et al. 2007

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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