Noise Reduction Using Wavelet Thresholding of Multitaper Estimators and Geometric Approach to Spectral Subtraction for Speech Coding Strategy

Abstract

Objectives. Noise reduction using wavelet thresholding of multitaper estimators (WTME) and geometric approach to spectral subtraction (GASS) can improve speech quality of noisy sound for speech coding strategy. This study used Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) to assess the performance of the WTME and GASS for speech coding strategy. Methods. This study included 25 Mandarin sentences as test materials. Environmental noises including the air-conditioner, cafeteria and multi-talker were artificially added to test materials at signal to noise ratio (SNR) of -5, 0, 5, and 10 dB. HiRes 120 vocoder WTME and GASS noise reduction process were used in this study to generate sound outputs. The sound outputs were measured by the PESQ to evaluate sound quality. Results. Two figures and three tables were used to assess the speech quality of the sound output of the WTME and GASS. Conclusion. There is no significant difference between the overall performance of sound quality in both methods, but the geometric approach to spectral subtraction method is slightly better than the wavelet thresholding of multitaper estimators.