Connected Mandarin Digit Speech Recognition Using Two-Layer Acoustic Universal Structure

Abstract

Because of the single-syllable of Chinese words and the confusing nature of Chinese pronunciation, connected mandarin digit speech recognition (CMDSR) is a challenging task in the field of speech recognition. This paper applied a novel acoustic representation of speech, called the acoustic universal structure (AUS) where the non-linguistic variations such as vocal tract length, lines and noises are well removed. A two-layer matching strategy based on the AUS models of speech, including the digit and string AUS models, is proposed for connected mandarin digit speech recognition. The speech recognition system for connected mandarin digits is described in detail, and the experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain the higher recognition rate.