Method and apparatus for text-independent speaker recognition

Abstract

A method and apparatus for recognizing an unknown speaker from a plurality of speaker candidates. Portions of speech from the speaker candidates and from the unknown speaker are sampled and digitized. The digitized samples are converted into frames of speech, each frame representing a point in an LPC-12 multi-dimensional speech space. Using a character covering algorithm, a set of frames of speech is selected, called characters, from the frames of speech of all speaker candidates. The speaker candidates' portions of speech are divided into smaller portions called segments. A smaller plurality of model characters for each speaker candidate is selected from the character set. For each set of model characters the distance from each speaker candidate's frame of speech to the closest character in the model set is determined and stored in a model histogram. When a model histogram is completed for a segment a distance D is found whereby at least a majority of frames have distances greater D. The mean distance value of D and variance across all segments for both speaker and imposter is then calculated. These values are added to the set of model characters to form the speaker model. To perform recognition the frames of the unknown speaker as they are received are buffered and compared with the sets of model characters to form model histograms for each speaker. A likelihood ratio is formed. The speaker candidate with the highest likelihood ratio is chosen as the unknown speaker.