Method and system for bandwidth efficient and enhanced concatenative synthesis based communication

• US 20070083367A1
• Filed: 10/11/2005
• Published: 04/12/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/11/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Motorola, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Motorola, Inc. (Motorola Solutions, Inc.)
• Inventors: Ahya, Deepak, Baudino, Daniel, Mukhtar, Adeel
• Application Number:
  US11/247,543
• Publication Number:
  US 20070083367A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/235
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/0018 Speech coding using phonetic or linguistical decoding of the source; Reconstruction using text-to-speech synthesis

Abstract

A voice communication system and method for improved bandwidth and enhanced concatenative speech synthesis includes a transmitter (10) having a voice recognition engine (12) that receives speech and provides text, a voice segmentation module (24) that segments the speech into a plurality of speech units or snippets, a database (18) for storing the snippets, a voice parameter extractor (28) for extracting among rate or gain, and a data formatter (20) that converts text to snippets and compresses snippets. The data formatter can merge snippets and text into a data stream. The system can further include at a receiver (50) an interpreter (52) for extracting parameters, text, voice, and snippets from the data stream, a parameter reconstruction module (54) for detecting gain and rate, a text to speech engine (56), and a second database (58) that is populated with snippets from the data stream that are missing in the second database

Claims

1. A method for improved bandwidth and enhanced concatenative speech synthesis in a voice communication system, comprising the steps of:

receiving a speech input;

converting the speech input to text using voice recognition;

segmenting the speech input into speech units;

comparing the speech units with the text and with stored speech units in a database;

combining a speech unit with the text in a data stream if the speech unit is a new speech unit to the database; and

transmitting the data stream.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises the step of storing the new speech unit in the database, wherein the speech unit is among a diphone, a triphone, a syllable, or a phoneme.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises the step of transmitting just text if the speech unit is an existing speech unit in the database.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises the step of extracting voice parameters among speech rate or gain for each speech unit.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises the step of determining if the speech input is for a new voice and resetting the database if the speech input is the new voice.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the method further comprises the step of determining gain by measuring an energy level for each speech unit.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the method further comprises the step of determining speech rate from a voice recognition module.

8. The method of claim 4, wherein the method further comprises the step of compressing speech units stored in the database and transmitted.

9. A method for improved bandwidth and enhanced concatenative speech synthesis in a voice communication system, comprising the steps of:

extracting data into parameters, text, voice and speech units;

forwarding speech units and parameters to a text to speech engine;

storing a new speech unit missing from a database into the database; and

retrieving a stored speech unit for each text portion missing an associated speech unit from the data.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises the step of comparing a speech unit from the extracted data with speech units stored in the database.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises the step of reconstructing prosody from the parameters sent to a text to speech engine.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises the step of resetting the database if a new voice is detected from the voice from the extracted data.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises the step of synchronizing the database at a receiver with a database at a transmitter.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises the step of recreating speech using the new speech units and the stored speech units.

15. The method of claim 9, wherein the method comprises the step of increasing efficiency in bandwidth use by increasingly using stored speech units as the database becomes populated with speech units.

16. A voice communication system for improved bandwidth and enhanced concatenative speech synthesis in a voice communication system, comprising at a transmitter:

a voice recognition engine that receives a speech input and provides a text output’

a voice segmentation module coupled to the voice recognition engine that segments the speech input into a plurality of speech units;

a speech unit database coupled to the voice segmentation module for storing the plurality of speech units;

a voice parameter extractor coupled to the voice recognition engine for extracting among rate or gain or both; and

a data formatter that converts text to speech units and compresses speech units using a vocoder.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the data formatter further merges speech units and text into a single data stream.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the system further comprises at a receiver:

an interpreter for extracting parameters, text, voice, and speech units from the single data stream;

a parameter reconstruction module coupled to the interpreter for detecting gain and rate;

a text to speech engine coupled to the interpreter and parameter reconstruction module; and

a second speech unit database that is further populated with speech units from the data stream that are missing in the second speech unit database.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the receiver further comprises a voice identifier that can reset the database if a new voice is detected from the data stream.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the second speech unit database is synchronized with the speech unit database.