The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 17, 2002
Filed:
Jul. 23, 1999
Filiz Basbug Ertem, McLean, VA (US);
Srinivas Nandkumar, Silver Spring, MD (US);
Kumar Swaminathan, North Potomac, MD (US);
Hughes Electronics Corporation, El Segundo, CA (US);
Abstract
An improved noise reduction algorithm is provided, as well as a voice activity detector, for use in a voice communication system. The voice activity detector allows for a reliable estimate of noise and enhancement of noise reduction. The noise reduction algorithm and voice activity detector can be implemented integrally in an encoder or applied independently to speech coding application. The voice activity detector employs line spectral frequencies and enhanced input speech which has undergone noise reduction to generate a voice activity flag. The noise reduction algorithm employs a smooth gain function determined from a smoothed noise spectral estimate and smoothed input noisy speech spectra. The gain function is smoothed both across frequency and time in an adaptive manner based on the estimate of the signal-to-noise ratio. The gain function is used for spectral amplitude enhancement to obtain a reduced noise speech signal. Smoothing employs critical frequency bands corresponding to the human auditory system. Swirl reduction is performed to improve overall human perception of decoded speech.