Clatter Reduction for Electronic Artificial Larynx

Abstract

After total laryngectomy the normal voice can be replaced by an electronic artificial larynx (AL). However, the results of the surrogate voice are not overall satisfying due to a robotic clattered sound of that prosthesis. In this paper the outcome of a sound investigation for an AL is presented. This work is part of our AL research project on laryngectomee speech enhancement. As a result, an autoregressive model of the hearing process is derived that can directly be used for a novel speech-enhancement procedure. The model is derived in the framework of linear prediction theory based on the fact that speech can be modelled as the output of a linear filter excited by a periodic pulse train and random noise. Additionally, we developed an innovative training unit for novice laryngectomees measuring the relative inter-line energy of the speech.