Patent ID: 7630891

Claim:
A voice region detection apparatus, comprising: a preprocessing unit for dividing an input voice signal into input frames comprised of a sequence of elements having a number of runs; a whitening unit for combining white noise with the frames input from the preprocessing unit; a random parameter extraction unit for extracting random parameters indicating the randomness of frames from the frames input from the whitening unit; a frame state determination unit for classifying the frames into voice frames and noise frames based on the random parameters extracted by the random parameter extraction unit; a voice region detection unit for detecting a voice region by calculating start and end positions of a voice based on the voice and noise frames input from the frame state determination unit wherein the random parameter extraction unit extracts a random parameter for a frame input from the whitening unit based on a determination of the number of runs in said frame wherein the input frames include vocal frames and fricative frames, wherein the frame state determination unit determines that if the random parameter of a frame extracted by the random parameter extraction unit is below a first threshold, the relevant frame is one of the vocal frames, wherein the frame state determination unit determines that, if the random parameter of a frame extracted by the random parameter extraction unit is above a second threshold, the relevant frame is one of the fricative frames; and a color noise elimination unit for eliminating color noise from the voice region detected by the voice region detection unit, wherein the color noise elimination unit eliminates the color noise from the detected voice region if the random parameter of the voice region detected by the voice region detection unit is below a predetermined threshold, wherein the predetermined threshold is a value obtained by subtracting the amount of reduction in the random parameter due to the color noise from the first threshold, or wherein the predetermined threshold is a value obtained by subtracting the amount of reduction in the random parameter due to the color noise from the second threshold.