1st ETRW on Speech Production Modeling: From Control Strategies to Acoustics 4th Speech Production Seminar: Models and Data Autrans, France May 20-24, 1996

Estimation of the Vocal-tract Area Function from Acoustical Measurements: Numerical Methods and Experiments

Masaaki Honda, Takemi Mochida

Information Science Research Laboratory, NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Kanagawa, Japan

This paper describes an acoustical method for determining the vocal tract area function from the incident and reflected signals at the lips. Two estimation procedures, the direct method and the least mean square (LMS) error method, are presented based on the transfer function of the vocal tract from the incident signal input to the reflected signal output. The estimation accuracy and the robustness against the measuring noise are examined using both computer simulation and actual acoustical measurements for test cavities with various constriction sizes. The LMS method significantly improves the accuracy for the area function behind the narrow constriction.

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Bibliographic reference.  Honda, Masaaki / Mochida, Takemi (1996): "Estimation of the vocal-tract area function from acoustical measurements: numerical methods and experiments", In SPM-1996, 167-170.