A modular approach to speech enhancement with an application to speech coding

Ephraim and Malah's (1984, 1985) MMSE-LSA speech enhancement algorithm, while robust and effective, is difficult to tune and adjust for the tradeoff between noise reduction and distortion. We suggest a means of generalizing this design, which allows for other estimators besides the MMSE-LSA to be used within the same supporting framework. When a modified version of Ephraim and Van Trees's (see IEEE Trans. Speech and Audio Proc., vol.3, p.251-66, 1995) spectral domain constrained signal subspace estimator is used in this manner, we obtain a system with greater flexibility and similar performance. We also explore the possibility of using different speech enhancement techniques as pre-processors for different parameter extraction modules of the IS-641 speech coder (a 7.4 kbit/s ACELP codec). We show that such a strategy can increase the quality of the coded speech and lead to a system that is more robust to differing noise types.