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Transformation of whispering voice to pseudo-real voice for unvoiced telephony and communication aid for voice-handicapped persons

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Abstract

For voice handicapped people, an easy to use voicing aid device is wanted. In mobile telephony, so-called non-speaking speech communication is an expected solution for essential privacy as well as for acoustic nuisance prevention. The study introduced here intends to cover both issues, introducing a system where the whispering (non-speaking voice or talk without vocal fold activation) signal is converted to pseudo-real voice signal, which is to be sent to, or heard by, the other party. The study also includes validation tests with multiple volunteers for its output legibility. Unlike general concept of speech regeneration being inclined to signal recognition or decomposition to text followed by electronic reading (voicing), our system converts it almost directly without recognition or decomposition steps. The processing is based on repetitive playback of short time autocorrelation, conducted by synthetic pitch pulse. A real time software pipeline process is under development.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan

    Anderson Pierre Passos

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  1. Anderson Pierre Passos
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Correspondence to Anderson Pierre Passos.

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Passos, A.P. Transformation of whispering voice to pseudo-real voice for unvoiced telephony and communication aid for voice-handicapped persons. Telecommun Syst 52, 1413–1422 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-011-9619-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-011-9619-9

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