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Extraction of Vocal Tract Length from Formant Frequencies for Forensic Speech Applications in Noisy Environment

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Computational Intelligence in Data Science (ICCIDS 2023)

Abstract

In forensic speaker recognition, the speaker’s vocal tract length (VTL) is an important factor. In this work formant frequency analysis of Malayalam vowels were carried out on sound samples collected from 100 speakers and their vocal tract lengths were found experimentally. We have estimated vocal tract length for five Malayalam vowel sounds for different speakers. Using formant frequencies, the effect of VTL on vowel production variation have been investigated here. Data were collected from 100 participants (52 females and 48 males) in five Malayalam vowels /a/, /e/, /u/, /ae/, and /o/. Each vowel was recorded ten times. The accuracy of the formant extraction technique is highly sensitive to the quality of the input sample. It works best with samples that don’t have any noise, but its performance goes down when it’s used with noisy data. The vocal tract was estimated using Pink Noise, White Gaussian Noise, and Red Noise with signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) ranging from −20 dB to +20 dB. The autocorrelation-based formant extraction is a good way to find vocal tracts when there is a lot of noise in the background. This strategy improves the accuracy of VTL extraction even at extremely high noise levels (−20 dB) compared to previous research. This information is extremely valuable for forensic speaker recognition difficulties in environments with heavy background noise. The VTL can be employed for speaker normalization and parameter extraction.

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Correspondence to K. V. Aljinu Khadar .

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Aljinu Khadar, K.V., Sunil Kumar, R.K., Sameer, V.V. (2023). Extraction of Vocal Tract Length from Formant Frequencies for Forensic Speech Applications in Noisy Environment. In: Chandran K R, S., N, S., A, B., Hamead H, S. (eds) Computational Intelligence in Data Science. ICCIDS 2023. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 673. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38296-3_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38296-3_20

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