Speech Enhancement Algorithm to Reduce the Effect of Background Noise in Mobile Phones

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 degradation and mechanisms to mitigate the noise impact for improved speech signal perception. Gain adjustment process with simple time domain and frequency domain approach using psychoacoustic has been adapted to improve the quality and intelligibility of the speech signal in the noisy environments by automatically enhancing the speech signals when the noise dominates. Time domain approach is less complex and frequency domain using psychoacoustic is more efficient in overcoming the degradation of speech signals in presence of near-end or background noise.