Pitch period determination of aperiodic speech signals

The problem of pitch determination in aperiodic speech signals and its relevance for practical computer speech applications is discussed. Four patterns of aperiodic voice excitation are distinguished systematically with respect to their acoustical characteristics and their distributional properties between different speakers (female and male) and different kinds of text boundaries. Several pitch determination algorithms (PDAs), including both time-domain and short-term analysis approaches such as the Gold-Rabiner algorithm, the SIFT algorithm, and the cepstrum method, are evaluated for their capacity to detect and identify these patterns correctly in continuous human speech. A PDA is presented which outperforms the other methods regarding correct voicing decision and pitch estimation in quasi-periodic as well as in aperiodic speech signals