Patent Document ID: 4837830
Application ID: 07003971
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. Speaker recognition apparatus for identifying a speaker by identifying the speech signal of an unknown speaker as one of a finite number of speakers comprising: front end processing means responsive to said speech signal to provide digitized samples of said speech at an output, said front end processing means including lowpass filter means responsive to said speech signal to limit the band width thereof to about 3 KHz at an output of said filter means, storage means coupled to said processing means and having a first plurality of storage locations for storing said digitized samples, means included in said front end processing means and coupled to said storage means and responsive to said stored digitized samples for dividing said samples into frames, each frame containing a given number of samples, signal processing means included in said front end processing means and coupled to said logic means and responsive to said samples in said frame to provide at an output a series of speech parameters indicative of the nature of said speech content in each of said frames and including means for determining which of said frames contain speech by providing a smoothed histogram of the input energy in each of said frame to determine which of said frames contain speech according to said input energy, speaker modeling means coupled to said output of said signal processing means in a first selectable mode and operative to provide a model of speech characteristics for said speaker in said first mode, said signal modeling means including processor means responsive to said speech parameters within each speech frame to provide a covariance matrix indicative of said speech parameters and coupled to said storage means to store at a second plurality of locations said matrix to employ said matrix as a model during a second selectable mode of operation, speaker recognition means coupled to the output of said signal processing means in a second selectable mode operative to identify the speaker from the model which has been stored in said first mode and responsive to said parameters including comparison means for comparing the average current parameter with said stored speaker models during said speech frames as provided by said front end processing means, over a predetermined number of frames whereby a favorable comparison is indicative of a known speaker for which a model is stored, and means coupled to said output of said signal processing means for selecting either said first or second modes.