Formant frequency estimation in noise

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of formant frequency estimation of speech signals corrupted by colored noise. The spectrum is sequentially segmented into K segments so that each segment contains a single formant. A segmentation metric based on Wiener filter theory is proposed for determining the segment boundaries. A peak-picking algorithm is used for estimating the formant frequencies in each segment. Results obtained using vowels embedded in +5 dB S/N speech-shaped noise, indicated that the proposed algorithm produced formant frequencies which were comparable to those estimated in quiet.