ISCA Archive NOLISP 2005
ISCA Archive NOLISP 2005

Voiced excitation models for speech production based on time variable Volterra systems

Karl Schnell, Arild Lacroix

The speech production can be modeled by linear and nonlinear systems. In this contribution a time variable nonlinear Volterra system is used to model the fluctuations of the voiced excitation while a linear system models the resonances of the speech production system. The estimation of the Volterra system is performed by a prediction algorithm. This is enabled by a description of the prediction problem as an approximation by a series expansion. Speech examples show that the use of a time variable Volterra system improves the naturalness of the synthetic speech.