Development of a high resolution UWB Sensor for Estimation of Transfer Function of Vocal Tract Filter

UWB sensor has been considered as a good candidate for non-invasive medical imaging of human body. In this paper an FCC compliant UWB pulsed radar sensor is proposed. The transmitter transmits a pulse using a broadband monopole antenna. The pulse shape is similar to fifth derivative of Gaussian bell shape. The homodyne receiver is designed such that it correlates the received signal with a known template signal. The radar is capable of measuring millimeters of target motion. This radar is used for measurement of windpipe wall and glottal structure motions. Also corresponding acoustic signals can be measured using a simple microphone. These data are used in estimation of transfer function of the vocal tract filter (VTF). The transfer functions obtained for an individually pronounced sound element can be further used in applications like speech regeneration, voice recognition and background noise filtering.