Cepstral signal analysis for pitch detection

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Cepstral signal analysis is one out of several methods that enables us to nd out whether a signal contains periodic elements. The method can also be used to determine the pitch of a signal.

1.1 Denition of the cepstral coefcients

The cepstral coefcients are found by using the following equation c() = F {log(|F {x[n]}|2 )}

where F denotes fourier transform and x[n] is the signal in the time domain. |F {x[n]}|2 is the power spectrum estimat of the signal. When using cepstral analysis we are using new expressions to denote the characteristics. is the quefrency and the magnitude of c() is called the gamnitude.

1.2 Properties of the cepstrum

From equation 1.1 follows that the cepstral coefcients describe the periodicity of the spectrum. A peak in the cepstrum denotes that the signal is a linear combination of multiples of the pitch frequency. The pitch period can be found as the number of the coefcient where the peak occurs. To describe this property an example is used. Figure 1.1 shows a segment of speech which we want to analyze using the cepstrum. The spectrum of the signal is shown at gure 1.2. It is clear that the signal is periodic due to the spikes with equal distances in the spectrum. However it is difcult to determine the pitch frequency since the different harmonics not necessarily is present in the spectrum. Figure 1.3 shows the cepstrum of the signal. The cepstrum consists of two elements. An element from the excitation sequence (a pulse train for voiced speech) in the higher quefrencies. The other element originates from the vocal tract impulse response and is present in the lower quefrencies. 1

CHAPTER 1. CEPSTRAL SIGNAL ANALYSIS FOR PITCH DETECTION

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Figure 1.1: A segment of a speech signal.

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Figure 1.2: The spectrum of the speech signal.

The peak in the higher quefrencies indicates that there are some periodicity in the signal. The peak is located at the period of the fundamental frequency.

1.2. PROPERTIES OF THE CEPSTRUM

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Figure 1.3: The cepstrum of the speech signal.