Robust Fundamental Frequency Estimation Combining Contrast Enhancement and Feature Unbiasing

A high-performance fundamental frequency estimator inspired by the human auditory system is presented. It uses a cubic-root transform and contrast enhancement on the spectral domain to enhance weak harmonics and suppress noise. The proposed weighted unbiasing process reduces multiple or submultiple pitch errors efficiently. Evaluation is performed under the presence of white noise, babble noise, and telephone channel distortion. The results show that the proposed method performs equivalent to or better than previous state-of-the-art methods in the majority of the noise and channel conditions.