On the use of pitch power spectrum in the evaluation of vocal tremor

A point process model of the speech excitation wave for sustained vowels has been formulated, where the pitch is modulated by a physiological disturbance (vocal tremor). It has been demonstrated that the power spectrum of an impulse train, representing the glottal pulses, is composed of a periodic replication of the spectrum of the modulating signal, accompanied by an impulse train at the carrier frequency. Hence, the power spectrum of the vocal tremor can be estimated from the pitch. A trend location algorithm has been developed to locate and remove local trends from the signal prior to the evaluation of the pitch power spectrum. Thus, spectral representation of the speech excitation enables estimation of vocal tremor