US 6,304,844 B1Granted

Spelling speech recognition apparatus and method for communications

AssigneeVerbalTek, Inc.

InventorsJames Pan, Yoon Kim, Josephine Chang, Juinn-Yan Chen

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Abstract

An accurate speech recognition system capable of rapidly processing greater varieties of words and operable in many different devices, but without the computational power and memory requirements, high power consumption, complex operating system, high costs, and weight of traditional systems. The utilization of individual letter utterances to transmit words allows voice information transfer for both person-to-person and person-to-machine communication for mobile phones, PDAs, and other communication devices. This invention is an apparatus and method for a speech recognition system comprising a microphone, front-end signal processor for generating parametric representations of speech input signals, a pronunciation database, a letter similarity comparator for comparing the parametric representation of the input signals with the parametric representations of letter pronunciations, and generating a sequence of associations between the input speech and the letters in the pronunciation database, a vocabulary database, a word similarity comparator for comparing an aggregated plurality of the letters with the words in the vocabulary database and generating a sequence of associations between them, and a display for displaying the selected letters and words for confirmation.

Claims22

Dependent claims

A speech recognition system comprising:

microphone means for receiving acoustic waves and converting the acoustic waves into electronic signals;
front-end signal processing means, coupled to said microphone means, for processing the electronic signals to generate parametric representations of the electronic signals, including preemphasizer means for spectrally flattening the electronic signals generated by said microphone means;
frame-blocking means, coupled to said preemphasizer means, for blocking the electronic signals into frames of N samples with adjacent frames separated by M samples;
windowing means, coupled to said frame-blocking means, for windowing each frame;
autocorrelation means, coupled to said windowing means, for autocorrelating the frames;
cepstral coefficient generating means, coupled to said autocorrelation means, for converting each frame into cepstral coefficients;
and tapered windowing means, coupled to said cepstral coefficient generating means, for weighting the cepstral coefficients, thereby generating parametric representations of the sound waves;
pronunciation database storage means for storing a plurality of parametric representations of letter pronunciations;
letter similarity comparator means, coupled to said front-end signal processing means and to said pronunciation database storage means, for comparing the parametric representation of the electronic signals with said plurality of parametric representations of letter pronunciations, and generating a first sequence of associations between the parametric representation of the electronic signals and said plurality of parametric representations of letter pronunciations responsive to predetermined criteria;
vocabulary database storage means for storing a plurality of parametric representations of word pronunciations;
word similarity comparator means, coupled to said letter similarity comparator and to said vocabulary database storage means, for comparing an aggregated plurality of parametric representations of letter pronunciations with said plurality of parametric representations of word pronunciations, and generating a second sequence of associations between at least one of said aggregated plurality of parametric representations of the letter pronunciations with at least one of said plurality of parametric representations of word pronunciations responsive to predetermined criteria;
and
display means, coupled to said word similarity comparator means, for displaying said first and second sequences of associations.

10 more elements

An electronic communication device comprising:

a microphone for receiving sound signals and generating electronic signals therefrom;
a coder-decoder, coupled to said microphone, for coding and decoding the electronic signals;
a signal processor, coupled to said coder-decoder, for processing the electronic signals thereby generating parametric representations of the electronic signals;
a database storage unit, coupled to said signal processor, for storing data and having a first sector therein for storing a plurality of letter pronunciation parametric representations and a second sector therein for storing a plurality of word pronunciation parametric representations;
a first comparator, coupled to said signal processor and to said database storage unit, for comparing parametric representations of the electronic signals with said plurality of letter pronunciation parametric representations in said first sector of said database storage unit;
a first selector, coupled to said first comparator, for selecting at least one of said plurality of letter pronunciation parametric representations responsive to predetermined criteria;
a second comparator, coupled to said signal processor and to said database storage unit, for comparing aggregated parametric representations of letter pronunciations with said plurality of word pronunciation parametric representations in said second sector of said database storage unit;
a second selector, coupled to said second comparator, for selecting at least one of said plurality of word pronunciation parametric representations responsive to predetermined criteria;
and
a display, coupled to said first and second selectors, for displaying said at least one of said plurality of selected letter pronunciation parametric representations and for displaying said at least one of said plurality of word pronunciation parametric representations.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.