Speech Enhancement for Nonstationary Noise Environments

In this paper, we present a simultaneous detection and estimation approach for speech enhancement in nonstationary noise environments. A detector for speech presence in the short-time Fourier transform domain is combined with an estimator, which jointly minimizes a cost function that takes into account both detection and estimation errors. Under speech-presence, the cost is proportional to a quadratic spectral amplitude error, while under speech-absence, the distortion depends on a certain attenuation factor. Experimental results demonstrate the advantage of using the proposed simultaneous detection and estimation approach which facilitate suppression of nonstationary noise with a controlled level of speech distortion.

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