Robust pitch estimation method and device for telephone speech
AssigneeHughes Electronics Corporation
InventorsKumar Swaminathan, Murthy Vemuganti
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A pitch estimating method includes the steps of (1) determining a set of pitch candidates to estimate a pitch of a digitized speech signal at each of a plurality of time instants, wherein series of these time instants define segments of the digitized speech signal; (2) constructing a pitch contour using a pitch candidate selected from each of the sets of pitch candidates determined in the first step; and (3) selecting a representative pitch estimate for the digitized speech signal segment from the set of pitch candidates comprising the pitch contour.
Claims15
A method of estimating the pitch of a digitized speech signal comprising the steps of:
- determining a set of pitch candidates to estimate the pitch of the digitized speech signal at each of a plurality of time instants, wherein series of the time instants define segments of the digitized speech signal;
- constructing a pitch contour for the digitized speech signal segments using a selected pitch candidate from each of the sets of pitch candidates;
- selecting a representative pitch estimate for each of the digitized speech signal segments from the selected pitch candidates constituting the pitch contour by calculating a distance metric value for each pair of selected pitch candidates.
A pitch estimator for speech signals comprising:
- a clock for measuring a series of time instants;
- a sampler coupled to the clock for receiving the speech signals and generating a series of digitized speech segments corresponding to the series of time instants received from the clock;
- a register for producing a plurality of different pitch candidates;
- a pitch candidate determinator coupled to the sampler for receiving the series of digitized speech segments and coupled to the register for selecting a plurality of pitch candidates from the register to approximate pitch values for the digitized speech segments;
- a pitch contour estimator coupled to the pitch candidate determinator for constructing a pitch contour from the pitch candidates selected by the pitch candidate determinator;
- a pitch estimate selector coupled to the pitch contour estimator for selecting a pitch estimate from the pitch contour by calculating a distance metric value for each pair of pitch candidates.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.