Speech Enhancement Algorithm Based on a Hybrid Estimator

Abstract

Abstract Speech is the essential way to interact between humans or between human and machine. However, it is always contaminated with different types of environment noise. Therefore, speech enhancement algorithms (SEA) have appeared as a significant approach in speech processing filed to suppress background noise and return back the original speech signal. In this paper, a new efficient two-stage SEA with low distortion is proposed based on minimum mean square error sense. The estimation of clean signal is performed by taking the advantages of Laplacian speech and noise modeling based on orthogonal transform (Discrete Krawtchouk-Tchebichef transform) coefficients distribution. The Discrete Krawtchouk-Tchebichef transform (DKTT) has a high energy compaction and provides a high matching between Laplacian density and its coefficients distribution that affects positively on reducing residual noise without sacrificing speech components. Moreover, a cascade combination of hybrid speech estimator is proposed by using two stages filters (non-linear and linear) based on DKTT domain to lessen the residual noise effectively without distorting the speech signal. The linear estimator is considered as a post processing filter that reinforces the suppression of noise by regenerate speech components. To this end, the output results have been compared with existing work in terms of different quality and intelligibility measures. The comparative evaluation confirms the superior achievements of the proposed SEA in various noisy environments. The improvement ratio of the presented algorithm in terms of PESQ measure are 5.8% and 1.8% for white and babble noise environments, respectively. In addition, the improvement ratio of the presented algorithm in terms of OVL measure are 15.7% and 9.8% for white and babble noise environments, respectively.