Speech Processing In Mobile Environments

This book focuses on speech processing in the presence of low-bit rate coding and varying background environments. The methods presented in the book exploit the speech events which are robust in noisy environments. Accurate estimation of these crucial events will be useful for carrying out various speech tasks such as speech recognition, speaker recognition and speech rate modification in mobile environments. The authors provide insights into designing and developing robust methods to process the speech in mobile environments. Covering temporal and spectral enhancement methods to minimize the effect of noise and examining methods and models on speech and speaker recognition applications in mobile environments.

This book provides a cross-disciplinary reference to speech in mobile and pervasive environments Speech in Mobile and Pervasive Environments addresses the issues related to speech processing on resource-constrained mobile devices. These include speech recognition in noisy environments, specialised hardware for speech recognition and synthesis, the use of context to enhance recognition and user experience, and the emerging software standards required for interoperability. This book takes a multi-disciplinary look at these matters, while offering an insight into the opportunities and challenges of speech processing in mobile environs. In developing regions, speech-on-mobile is set to play a momentous role, socially and economically; the authors discuss how voice-based solutions and applications offer a compelling and natural solution in this setting. Key Features Provides a holistic overview of all speech technology related topics in the context of mobility Brings together the latest research in a logically connected way in a single volume Covers hardware, embedded recognition and synthesis, distributed speech recognition, software technologies, contextual interfaces Discusses multimodal dialogue systems and their evaluation Introduces speech in mobile and pervasive environments for developing regions This book provides a comprehensive overview for beginners and experts alike. It can be used as a textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in electrical engineering and computer science. Students, practitioners or researchers in the areas of mobile computing, speech processing, voice applications, human-computer interfaces, and information and communication technologies will also find this reference insightful. For experts in the above domains, this book complements their strengths. In addition, the book will serve as a guide to practitioners working in telecom-related industries.

Two Top Industry Leaders Speak Out Judith Markowitz When Amy asked me to co-author the foreword to her new book on advances in speech recognition, I was honored. Amy’s work has always been infused with c- ative intensity, so I knew the book would be as interesting for established speech professionals as for readers new to the speech-processing industry. The fact that I would be writing the foreward with Bill Scholz made the job even more enjoyable. Bill and I have known each other since he was at UNISYS directing projects that had a profound impact on speech-recognition tools and applications. Bill Scholz The opportunity to prepare this foreword with Judith provides me with a rare oppor- nity to collaborate with a seasoned speech professional to identify numerous signi- cant contributions to the field offered by the contributors whom Amy has recruited. Judith and I have had our eyes opened by the ideas and analyses offered by this collection of authors. Speech recognition no longer needs be relegated to the ca- gory of an experimental future technology; it is here today with sufficient capability to address the most challenging of tasks. And the point-click-type approach to GUI control is no longer sufficient, especially in the context of limitations of mode- day hand held devices. Instead, VUI and GUI are being integrated into unified multimodal solutions that are maturing into the fundamental paradigm for comput- human interaction in the future.

Two Top Industry Leaders Speak Out Judith Markowitz When Amy asked me to co-author the foreword to her new book on advances in speech recognition, I was honored. Amy’s work has always been infused with c- ative intensity, so I knew the book would be as interesting for established speech professionals as for readers new to the speech-processing industry. The fact that I would be writing the foreward with Bill Scholz made the job even more enjoyable. Bill and I have known each other since he was at UNISYS directing projects that had a profound impact on speech-recognition tools and applications. Bill Scholz The opportunity to prepare this foreword with Judith provides me with a rare oppor- nity to collaborate with a seasoned speech professional to identify numerous signi- cant contributions to the field offered by the contributors whom Amy has recruited. Judith and I have had our eyes opened by the ideas and analyses offered by this collection of authors. Speech recognition no longer needs be relegated to the ca- gory of an experimental future technology; it is here today with sufficient capability to address the most challenging of tasks. And the point-click-type approach to GUI control is no longer sufficient, especially in the context of limitations of mode- day hand held devices. Instead, VUI and GUI are being integrated into unified multimodal solutions that are maturing into the fundamental paradigm for comput- human interaction in the future.

"Mobile Speech and Advanced Natural Language Solutions" presents the discussion of the most recent advances in intelligent human-computer interaction, including fascinating new study findings on talk-in-interaction, which is the province of conversation analysis, a subfield in sociology/sociolinguistics, a new and emerging area in natural language understanding. Editors Amy Neustein and Judith A. Markowitz have recruited a talented group of contributors to introduce the next generation natural language technologies for practical speech processing applications that serve the consumer’s need for well-functioning natural language-driven personal assistants and other mobile devices, while also addressing business’ need for better functioning IVR-driven call centers that yield a more satisfying experience for the caller. This anthology is aimed at two distinct audiences: one consisting of speech engineers and system developers; the other comprised of linguists and cognitive scientists. The text builds on the experience and knowledge of each of these audiences by exposing them to the work of the other.

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) is a very attractive means for human-machine interaction. The degree of maturity reached by speech recognition technologies during recent years allows the development of applications that use them. In particular, ASR shows an enormous potential in mobile environments, where devices such as mobile phones or PDAs are used, and for Internet Protocol (IP) applications. Speech Recognition Over Digital Channels is the first book of its kind to offer a complete system comprehension, addressing the topics of distributed and network-based speech recognition issues and standards, the concepts of speech processing and transmission, and system architectures and robustness. Describes the different client/server architectures for remote speech recognition systems, by means of which the client transmits speech parameters through a digital channel to a remote recognition server Focuses on robustness against both adverse acoustic environments (in the front-end) and bit errors/packet loss Discusses four ETSI standards for distributed speech recognition; the understanding of the standards and the technologies behind them Provides the necessary background for the comprehension of remote speech recognition technologies This book will appeal to a wide-ranging audience: engineers using speech recognition systems, researchers involved in ASR systems and those interested in processing and transmitting speech such as signal processing and communications communities. It will also be of interest to technical experts requiring an understanding of recognition over mobile and IP networks, and postgraduate students working on robust speech processing.

Modern communication devices, such as mobile phones, teleconferencing systems, VoIP, etc., are often used in noisy and reverberant environments. Therefore, signals picked up by the microphones from telecommunication devices contain not only the desired near-end speech signal, but also interferences such as the background noise, far-end echoes produced by the loudspeaker, and reverberations of the desired source. These interferences degrade the fidelity and intelligibility of the near-end speech in human-to-human telecommunications and decrease the performance of human-to-machine interfaces (i.e., automatic speech recognition systems). The proposed book deals with the fundamental challenges of speech processing in modern communication, including speech enhancement, interference suppression, acoustic echo cancellation, relative transfer function identification, source localization, dereverberation, and beamforming in reverberant environments. Enhancement of speech signals is necessary whenever the source signal is corrupted by noise. In highly non-stationary noise environments, noise transients, and interferences may be extremely annoying. Acoustic echo cancellation is used to eliminate the acoustic coupling between the loudspeaker and the microphone of a communication device. Identification of the relative transfer function between sensors in response to a desired speech signal enables to derive a reference noise signal for suppressing directional or coherent noise sources. Source localization, dereverberation, and beamforming in reverberant environments further enable to increase the intelligibility of the near-end speech signal.

This book provides a cross-disciplinary reference to speech in mobile and pervasive environments Speech in Mobile and Pervasive Environments addresses the issues related to speech processing on resource-constrained mobile devices. These include speech recognition in noisy environments, specialised hardware for speech recognition and synthesis, the use of context to enhance recognition and user experience, and the emerging software standards required for interoperability. This book takes a multi-disciplinary look at these matters, while offering an insight into the opportunities and challenges of speech processing in mobile environs. In developing regions, speech-on-mobile is set to play a momentous role, socially and economically; the authors discuss how voice-based solutions and applications offer a compelling and natural solution in this setting. Key Features Provides a holistic overview of all speech technology related topics in the context of mobility Brings together the latest research in a logically connected way in a single volume Covers hardware, embedded recognition and synthesis, distributed speech recognition, software technologies, contextual interfaces Discusses multimodal dialogue systems and their evaluation Introduces speech in mobile and pervasive environments for developing regions This book provides a comprehensive overview for beginners and experts alike. It can be used as a textbook for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in electrical engineering and computer science. Students, practitioners or researchers in the areas of mobile computing, speech processing, voice applications, human-computer interfaces, and information and communication technologies will also find this reference insightful. For experts in the above domains, this book complements their strengths. In addition, the book will serve as a guide to practitioners working in telecom-related industries.