Determination of glottal open regions by exploiting changes in the vocal tract system characteristics

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to determine the open phase region of a glottal cycle based on changes in the characteristics of the vocal tract system. The glottal closing phase contributes to major excitation of the vocal tract system. The opening phase affects the vocal tract system characteristics by effectively increasing the length of the tract, due to coupling of the subglottal region. To determine the glottal open region, it is necessary to estimate the vocal tract characteristics from the segment with subglottal coupling. The proposed method derives the dominant resonance frequency (DRF) of the vocal tract system at every sampling instant, using a heavily decaying window (HDW) for analysis. The DRF contour transits to lower frequencies during glottal open region, when compared to the glottal closed region. The open region, within the glottal cycles from voiced speech segment, is extracted using the HDW method. The results are compared with the open region derived from the electroglottograph (EGG) signals and speech signals. The results show that the proposed method based on DRF contour, derived from the speech signals, seems to perform better than the methods based on EGG signals.