Microwave Human Vocal Vibration Signal Detection Based on Doppler Radar Technology

A speech radar system is presented for extracting speech information from the vocal vibration signal of a human subject. Due to the tiny glottis motion of several millimeters, a coherent homodyne demodulator with high sensitivity is developed to detect reflected radio signal, phase modulated by the vibrating vocal cords. The signal detection quality and system circuit design are described. Measurements of vowels and words, both with the speech radar system and the conventional acoustic microphone system, were conducted and compared. The essential speech information can be reliably obtained from the proposed speech radar, making it more appealing for speech applications in high background acoustic noise environment.

[1]  Jenshan Lin,et al.  Range correlation and I/Q performance benefits in single-chip silicon Doppler radars for noncontact cardiopulmonary monitoring , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[2]  John F. Holzrichter,et al.  Denoising of human speech using combined acoustic and EM sensor signal processing , 2000, 2000 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37100).

[3]  Thomas Wittenberg,et al.  Quantitative characterization of functional voice disorders using motion analysis of high-speed video and modeling , 1997, 1997 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[4]  Chia-Chan Chang,et al.  Design of a Reflection-Type Phase Shifter With Wide Relative Phase Shift and Constant Insertion Loss , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[5]  Bhiksha Raj,et al.  Feature compensation with secondary sensor measurements for robust speech recognition , 2005, 2005 13th European Signal Processing Conference.

[6]  William M. Campbell,et al.  Multimodal Speaker Authentication using Nonacoustic Sensors , 2003 .

[7]  Yong Huang,et al.  Microwave life-detection systems for searching human subjects under earthquake rubble or behind barrier , 2000, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[8]  Todd Jason Gable,et al.  Speaker verification using acoustic and glottal electromagnetic micropower sensor (GEMS) data , 2000 .

[9]  D.V. Anderson,et al.  Broad phoneme class recognition in noisy environments using the GEMS , 2004, Conference Record of the Thirty-Eighth Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, 2004..

[10]  J. Holzrichter,et al.  Speech articulator measurements using low power EM-wave sensors. , 1998, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[11]  Kun-mu Chen,et al.  An X-Band Microwave Life-Detection System , 1986, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[12]  Gregory Clell Burnett,et al.  The physiological basis of Glottal electromagnetic micropower sensors (GEMS) and their use in defining an excitation function for the human vocal tract , 1999 .

[13]  Donald G. Childers,et al.  Electroglottography for Laryngeal Function Assessment and Speech Analysis , 1984, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[14]  Jenshan Lin,et al.  Frequency-tuning technique for remote detection of heartbeat and respiration using low-power double-sideband transmission in the ka-band , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[15]  Changzhi Li,et al.  Random Body Movement Cancellation in Doppler Radar Vital Sign Detection , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[16]  Byung-Kwon Park,et al.  Arctangent Demodulation With DC Offset Compensation in Quadrature Doppler Radar Receiver Systems , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[17]  E. Topsakal,et al.  Characterization and Testing of a Skin Mimicking Material for Implantable Antennas Operating at ISM Band (2.4 GHz-2.48 GHz) , 2008, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters.

[18]  C. G. Rowden,et al.  Computationally efficient model of the basilar membrane , 1990 .

[19]  William M. Campbell,et al.  Exploiting Nonacoustic Sensors for Speech Encoding , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing.