Low Complexity Speech Enhancement Algorithm for Improved Perception in Mobile Devices

Abstract

In mobile phones, perceived quality of speech signal deteriorates significantly in the presence of background noise since near-end/surrounding noise also arrives at the near-end listener’s ears. The quality of the received signal varies widely depending upon signal strength and unavoidable background noise in the user environment. There is a need to improve the quality of received speech signal in noisy conditions by developing the speech enhancement algorithms. This paper focuses on the impact of the various background noises on signal perception and mechanisms to mitigate the noise impact for improved signal perception. Gain adjustment process with simple time domain approach has been adapted to improve the quality and intelligibility of the speech signal in the noisy environments by automatically increasing output levels when the noise dominates. Since time domain approach has been used, it is less complex and consumes very less battery power of the mobile and also efficiently masks the background noise. This paper studies the effect of various signal parameters on automatic gain adjustment of the received signal to enhance its perception.