A Higher Intelligibility Speech-Enhancement Algorithm

A higher intelligibility speech-enhancement algorithm based on subspace is proposed. The majority existing speech-enhancement algorithms cannot effectively improve enhanced speech intelligibility. One important reason is that they only use Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) to constrain speech distortion but ignore that speech distortion region differences have a significant effect on intelligibility. A priori Signal Noise Ratio (SNR) and gain matrix were used to determine the distortion region. Then the gain matrix was modified to constrain the magnitude spectrum of the amplification distortion in excess of 6.02 dB which damages intelligibility much. Both objective evaluation and subjective audition show that the proposed algorithm does improve the enhanced speech intelligibility.