Modeling of Human Voice Box in VLSI for Low Power Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Communication is heavily dependent on ideas expressed through speech. The ideas and tonal qualities during vocal expression give voice an idea about person characteristics and personality. The estimation of vocal tract configuration from speech sound to represent speech events with robust and compact signals that describe the salient features of speech is an important area of speech communication. The Human Voice Box (Glottis) is the source of voice production and an important part of human body. Recent techniques of speech processing, such as speech recognition and speech synthesis, use the glottal closure and opening instants. Current models of the glottal waves derive their shape from approximate information rather than from exactly measured data. In this work, an electrical model of Human Voice Box is presented by exploiting fluid volume velocity to current and fluid pressure to voltage. The glottis modeled as current source includes linear and nonlinear impedances to represent laminar and turbulent flow, respectively, in the vocal tract. The complete model of glottis runs at power supply of 1.8 volt and the design is verified in a standard TSMC 0.18 micrometer technology on BSIM 3v3 model using ELDO Simulator.