Formant tracking with quasilinearization

An algorithm for the calculation of formant tracks from a speech signal is presented. It is based on the method of quasilinearization, a nonlinear parameter estimation procedure. What distinguishes this method from the most other methods is the fact that the formants are directly calculated from the speech signal, using a nonlinear model for the speech production that is based on formants and LPC parameters (FLPC model). Since quasilinearization is a nonrecursive parameter estimation method, this procedure is also much faster than nonlinear estimation algorithms for formant tracking which are based on extended Kalman filters.<<ETX>>