In this paper, we propose a speech enhancement system, which integrates a bark-scaled wavelet packet decomposition (BS-WPD), a soft-decision gain modification and a "magnitude" decision-directed estimation technique. The BS-WPD provides an overcomplete auditory representation, having a higher frequency resolution than the critical band decomposition. Speech is estimated by Wiener filtering in the wavelet packet domain, modified by the signal presence probability. We introduce a "magnitude" decision-directed estimator for the variance of speech, which is closely related to the decision-directed estimator of Ephraim and Malah. This estimator achieves, in the established process, a better tradeoff between noise reduction and signal distortion. The proposed enhancement algorithm is tested with various noise types, and compared to a conventional log-spectral amplitude estimator. We show that noise can be further suppressed, while preserving its natural structure and the intelligibility and quality of the speech components.
Cite as: Cohen, I. (2001) Enhancement of speech using bark-scaled wavelet packet decomposition. Proc. 7th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech 2001), 1933-1936, doi: 10.21437/Eurospeech.2001-456
@inproceedings{cohen01_eurospeech,
author={Israel Cohen},
title={{Enhancement of speech using bark-scaled wavelet packet decomposition}},
year=2001,
booktitle={Proc. 7th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech 2001)},
pages={1933--1936},
doi={10.21437/Eurospeech.2001-456}
}