Dominance spectrum based V/UV classification and estimation

This paper presents a new method for robust voiced/unvoiced segment (V/UV) classification and accurate fundamental frequency ( ) estimation in a noisy environment. For this purpose, we introduce the degree of dominance and dominance spectrum that are defined by instantaneous frequency. The degree of dominance allows us to evaluate the magnitude of individual harmonic components of speech signals relative to the background noise. The V/UV segments are robustly classified based on the capability of the dominance spectrum to extract the regularity in the harmonic structure. is accurately determined based on fixed points corresponding to dominant harmonic components easily selected from the dominance spectrum. Experimental results show that the present method is better than the existing methods in terms of gross and fine errors, and V/UV correct rates in the presence of background white and babble noise.