Speech enhancement using the dual excitation speech model

The dual excitation (DE) speech model is applied to the problem of speech enhancement. The use of this model and its novel decomposition of speech into coexisting voiced and unvoiced components allow removal of additive wideband noise from the degraded speech with only the knowledge of the power spectrum of the noise. The unique properties of each component are exploited to improve the performance of the enhancement system. Informal comparisons between the DE speech enhancement system and a traditional spectral subtraction algorithm show a clear preference for the DE enhancement system. Although the amount of noise reduction in the two systems was similar, the DE system did not contain the tonal artifacts which were present in the spectral subtraction system. Preliminary evidence shows that the DE speech enhancement system may be able to improve the intelligibility of noisy speech for hearing impaired listeners.<>