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Front. Inform. Technol. Electron. Eng.  2012, Vol. 13 Issue (2): 139-145    DOI: 10.1631/jzus.C1100092
    
Detection of time varying pitch in tonal languages: an approach based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition
Hong Hong, Xiao-hua Zhu, Wei-min Su, Run-tong Geng, Xin-long Wang
School of Electronic Engineering and Optoelectronic Techniques, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China; State Key Laboratory of Modern Acoustics, Institute of Acoustics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
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Abstract  A method based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is proposed for accurately detecting the time varying pitch of speech in tonal languages. Unlike frame-, event-, or subspace-based pitch detectors, the time varying information of pitch within the short duration, which is of crucial importance in speech processing of tonal languages, can be accurately extracted. The Chinese Linguistic Data Consortium (CLDC) database for Mandarin Chinese was employed as standard speech data for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the method. It is shown that the proposed method provides more accurate and reliable results, particularly in estimating the tones of non-monotonically varying pitches like the third one in Mandarin Chinese. Also, it is shown that the new method has strong resistance to noise disturbance.

Key wordsEnsemble empirical mode decomposition      Time varying pitch      Tonal language      Noise restraint     
Received: 13 April 2011      Published: 19 January 2012
CLC:  TN912.3  
Cite this article:

Hong Hong, Xiao-hua Zhu, Wei-min Su, Run-tong Geng, Xin-long Wang. Detection of time varying pitch in tonal languages: an approach based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition. Front. Inform. Technol. Electron. Eng., 2012, 13(2): 139-145.

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http://www.zjujournals.com/xueshu/fitee/10.1631/jzus.C1100092     OR     http://www.zjujournals.com/xueshu/fitee/Y2012/V13/I2/139


Detection of time varying pitch in tonal languages: an approach based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition

A method based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is proposed for accurately detecting the time varying pitch of speech in tonal languages. Unlike frame-, event-, or subspace-based pitch detectors, the time varying information of pitch within the short duration, which is of crucial importance in speech processing of tonal languages, can be accurately extracted. The Chinese Linguistic Data Consortium (CLDC) database for Mandarin Chinese was employed as standard speech data for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the method. It is shown that the proposed method provides more accurate and reliable results, particularly in estimating the tones of non-monotonically varying pitches like the third one in Mandarin Chinese. Also, it is shown that the new method has strong resistance to noise disturbance.

关键词: Ensemble empirical mode decomposition,  Time varying pitch,  Tonal language,  Noise restraint 
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