Template-based spectral estimation using microphone array for speech recognition

This paper proposes a Template-based Spectral Estimation (TSE) method for noise reduction of microphone array processing aiming at speech recognition enhancement. In the proposed method, a noise template in a complex plane is calculated for each frequency bin using non-speech audio signals observed at microphones. Then for every noise-overlapped speech signals, a speech signal can be reformed by applying the template and the gradient descent method. Experiments were conducted to evaluate not only performance of noise reduction but also improvement of speech recognition. Then NRR 16.7dB improvement was achieved by combining TSE and Spectral Subtraction (SS) methods. For speech recognition, 44% relative recognition error reduction was obtained comparing with the conventional SS method.