Patent ID: 6975984
Filing Date: 2005-12-13
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
1. A method for processing an acoustic signal to separate the acoustic signal into a voiced (V) component corresponding to an electrolaryngeal source and an unvoiced (U) component corresponding to a turbulence source, the method comprising the steps of: digitizing the acoustic signal to produce an original stream of numerical values; extracting a segment of consecutive values from the original stream of numerical values to produce a first group of values covering two or more periods of the electrolaryngeal source; performing a discrete Fourier transform on the first group of values to produce a discrete Fourier transform result; extracting a second group of values from components of the discrete Fourier transform result which correspond to an electrolaryngeal fixed repetition rate, F inverse-Fourier transforming the second group of values, to produce a representation of a segment of the V component; concatenating multiple V component segments to form a V component sample stream; determining the U component by subtracting the V component sample stream from the original stream of numerical values; determining segments of the input acoustic signal that correspond to inter-word segments; filtering the V component sample stream; for segments determined to be inter-word segments, setting the corresponding values of the V component sample stream to a zero value; adding the U component values to the altered V component sample stream values; and producing a processed acoustic sample stream from the addition of the U values and altered V values.