Patent ID: 7756703

Claim:
A formant tracking apparatus, comprising: a framing unit dividing an input voice signal into a plurality of frames; a linear prediction analyzing unit obtaining linear prediction coefficients for each of the frames; a segmentation unit grouping the linear prediction coefficients for the frames into a plurality of segments; a formant candidate determining unit obtaining formant candidates by using the linear prediction coefficients, and summing the formant candidates for the frames, for each segment to determine formant candidates for each segment; a formant number determining unit determining a number of tracking formants for each segment among the formant candidates satisfying a predetermined condition; and a tracking unit searching the formants, a number of the formants searched being as many as the number of the tracking formants determined in the formant number determining unit among the formant candidates belonging to each segment, wherein the number of the tracking formants is determined by averaging over all of the frames a number of the formants having bandwidths which are narrower than a predetermined value among the formant candidates.