APPLIED MATH SEMINAR

Speaker: Ronen Talmon, Dept. of Electric Engineering, Technion – Israel
Institute of Technology

Title: Speech Enhancement in Transient Noise Environment using Nonlocal
Diffusion Filtering

When/where: Tuesday, March 30th, 4:15 PM, LOM 205

Abstract:
Enhancement of speech signals for hands-free communication systems has attracted
significant research efforts in the last few decades. Still, many aspects and
applications remain open and require further research. One of the important
open problems is the single-channel transient noise reduction.
In this talk, we present a novel approach for transient noise reduction that
relies on non-local (NL) neighborhood filters. In particular, we propose an
algorithm for the enhancement of a speech signal contaminated by repeating
transient noise events.  Based on a statistical model for the measurements and
diffusion interpretation of NL filtering, we obtain further insight into the
algorithm behavior. In particular, for a given transient noise, we determine
whether estimation of the noise spectrum is feasible, how to properly set the
algorithm parameters, and what the expected performance of the algorithm is. We
demonstrate good experimental results in enhancing speech signals contaminated
by transient noise, such as typical household noises, construction sounds,
keyboard typing, and metronome clacks.