Browsing by Author "Kuo, WC"

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A high-performance Min-Nan/Taiwanese TTS system
(2003)
Kuo, WC
;
Zhong, XR
;
Wang, YR
;
Chen, SH
;
電信工程研究所
In this paper, the implementation of a high-performance Min-Nan/Taiwanese TTS system is presented. The system can convert both Min-Nan/Taiwanese texts, represented in a hybrid Han-Lo written form, and Chinese texts into natural Taiwanese speeches. It is an improved version of the system developed previously [11]. Improvements include: the add of a "Chinese-to-Min-Nan/Taiwanese" lexicon to solve the OOV problem and to increase the ability of processing Chinese text; the use of explicit tone sandhi rules to ease the learning of prosody generation; a further processing of the training database to detect all breaks not associated with PMs; and the use of four RNNs to separately generate four types of prosodic parameters. The system is implemented by software and runs in real-time on PC. An informal subjective listening test confirmed that the system performed well. All synthetic speeches sounded natural for well-tokenized Min-Nan/Taiwanese texts and for automatic tokenized Chinese texts.
A model-based tone labeling method for Min-Nan/Taiwanese speech
(2004)
Kuo, WC
;
Wang, YR
;
Chen, SH
;
電信工程研究所
;
Institute of Communications Engineering
in this paper, a model-based tone labeling method for Min-Nan/Taiwanese speech is proposed. It takes the mean and shape of syllable pitch contour as two modeling units and considers some major affecting factors that control their variations. By using the EM algorithm to estimate all parameters of the pitch mean and shape models from a speech database, we can decide the best tone sequences pronounced in all utterance of the database. Experimental results showed that it outperformed the VQ classification method which suffers from the interferences resulted from neighboring syllables and from the global prosodic phrase pattern.
Atomic force microscopy study on the surface structure of oxidized porous silicon
(1996-08-01)
Young, TF
;
Huang, IW
;
Yang, YL
;
Kuo, WC
;
Jiang, IM
We study the surface structure of porous silicon (PS) using atomic force microscopy (AFM), before and after oxidation in a HNO3 solution. The AFM image shows the PS surface with a self-affine random fractal structure of wires, hillocks and voids in various scales. After oxidization the wires and hillocks of PS structures are glazed with oxide and the voids are filled, PS structure is altered to a simple self-affine fractal structure of hillock clusters. The fractal dimension D of PS is around 2.3, which decreases with increasing oxidization to about 2.0 of a smooth surface for the saturated oxidization. Our direct observation of the fractal structure of PS from AFM data reveals a good explanation for the recently found novel nonlinear de-response in Ag thin films deposited on PS. We find the fractal surface structure of oxidized PS responds to the stepwise avalanche electric breakdown of the resistivity of Ag thin films deposited on oxidized PS.