Conditional Bayesian Estimation Employing a Phase-Sensitive Observation Model for Noise Robust Speech Recognition

In this contribution, conditional Bayesian estimation employing a phase-sensitive observation model for noise robust speech recognition will be studied. After a review of speech recognition under the presence of corrupted features, termed uncertainty decoding, the estimation of the posterior distribution of the uncorrupted (clean) feature vector will be shown to be a key element of noise robust speech recognition. The estimation process will be based on three major components: an a priori model of the unobservable data, an observation model relating the unobservable data to the corrupted observation and an inference algorithm, finally allowing for a computationally tractable solution. Special stress will be laid on a detailed derivation of the phase-sensitive observation model and the required moments of the phase factor distribution. Thereby, it will not only be proven analytically that the phase factor distribution is non-Gaussian but also that all central moments can (approximately) be computed solely based on the used mel filter bank, finally rendering the moments independent of noise type and signal-to-noise ratio. The phase-sensitive observation model will then be incorporated into a model-based feature enhancement scheme and recognition experiments will be carried out on the Aurora~2 and Aurora~4 databases. The importance of incorporating phase factor information into the enhancement scheme is pointed out by all recognition results. Application of the proposed scheme under the derived uncertainty decoding framework further leads to significant improvements in both recognition tasks, eventually reaching the performance achieved with the ETSI advanced front-end.