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Method and apparatus for increasing speech intelligibility in noisy environments

  • US 8,364,477 B2
  • Filed: 08/30/2012
  • Issued: 01/29/2013
  • Est. Priority Date: 05/25/2005
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method of improving intelligibility of speech that is included in audio that is emitted into a noisy environment, the method comprising:

  • determining if one or more voice formants are present in each ith audio segment of a plurality of audio segments;

    if one or more formants are determined to be present in the ith audio segment;

    selecting a perceptual frequency scale band (L) including at least one of the one or more formants from a plurality of perceptual frequency scale bands of a perceptual scale ambient noise spectrum of the noisy environment;

    comparing, to a threshold, a signal-to-noise ratio of the perceptual frequency scale band, andif the signal-to-noise ratio is less than the threshold, increasing a formant enhancement gain for the perceptual frequency scale band;

    computing a summed signal-to-noise ratio across at least a portion of the perceptual scale ambient noise spectrum wherein a plurality of speech magnitudes in each of the plurality of perceptual frequency scale bands are used as signal magnitudes;

    scaling a set of overall gains that include at least the formant enhancement gains as a function of the summed signal-to-noise ratio;

    smoothing the set of overall gains;

    filtering the ith audio segment with the set of overall gains; and

    outputting the ith audio segment into the noisy environment.

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