Speech Feature Extraction:

In this project the most important thing is to extract the feature from the speech signal. The speech feature extraction in a categorization problem is about reducing the Dimensionality of the input-vector while maintaining the discriminating power of the Signal. As we know from the above fundamental formation of speaker identification and verification systems, that the number of training and test vector needed for the classification problem grows exponential with the dimension of the given input vector, so we need feature extraction. But extracted feature should meet some criteria while dealing with the speech signal. Such as: _ Easy to measure extracted Speech features. _ Distinguish between speakers while being lenient of intra speaker variabilitys. _ It should not be susceptible to mimicry. _ It should show little fluctuation from one speaking environment to another. _ It should be stable over time. _ It should occur frequently and naturally in speech. Here we are using the Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) technique to extract features from the speech signal and compare the unknown speaker with the exist speaker in the database. Figure below shows the complete pipeline of Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients.

Framing and Windowing:

Above plot shows the word spoken by speaker. The recordings were digitized at f Samples are equal to 11,025 samples per second and at 16 bits per sample. Time goes from left to right and amplitude is shown vertically. When the speech signal is examined over a short period of time such as 5 to 100 milliseconds, the signal is reasonably stationery, and therefore this signals are examine in short time segment, short time segments is referred to as a spectral analysis. This means that the signal is blocked into 20-30 milliseconds of each frame. And to avoid the loss of any infor-

mation due to windowing adjacent frame is overlap with each other by 30 percent to 50 percent. As soon as the signal has been framed, each frame is multiplied with the window function w(n) with length N. The function below we are using is called hamming window function Where N = Length of the frame.

Hamming Window:
Hamming window is also called the raised cosine window. The equation and plot for the Hamming window shown below. In a window function there is a zero valued outside of some chosen interval. For example, a function that is stable inside the interval and zero elsewhere is called a rectangular window that illustrates the shape of its graphical representation. When signal or any other function is multiplied by a window function, the product is also zero valued outside the interval. The windowing is done to avoid problems due to truncation of the signal. Window function has some other applications such as spectral analysis, filter design, and audio data compression such as Vorbis

Cepstrum:
Cepstrum name was derived from the spectrum by reversing the first four letters of spectrum. We can say cepstrum is the Fourier Transformer of the log with unwrapped phase of the Fourier Transformer. _ Mathematically we can say Cepstrum of signal = FT(log(FT(the signal))+j2_m)

Where m is the integer required to properly unwrap the angle or imaginary part of the complex log function. _ Algorithmically we can say Signal - FT - log - phase unwrapping - FT Cepstrum. For defining the real values real cepstrum uses the logarithm function. While for defining the complex values whereas the complex cepstrum uses the complex Logarithm function. The real cepstrum uses the information of the magnitude of the Spectrum .Where as complex cepstrum holds information about both magnitude and phase of the initial spectrum, which allows the reconstruction of the signal. We can calculate the cepstrum by many ways. Some of them need a phase-warping algorithm, others do not. Figure below shows the pipeline from signal to cepstrum.

As we discussed in the Framing and Windowing section that speech signal is composed of quickly varying part e(n) excitation sequence convolved with slowly varying part (n) vocal system impulse response.

Once we convolved the quickly varying part and slowly varying part it makes difficult to separate the two parts, cepstrum is introduced to separate this two parts. The equation for the cepstrum is given below:

Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC): In this project we are using Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient. Mel frequency Cepstral Coefficients are coefficients that represent audio based on perception. This coefficient has a great success in speaker recognition application. It is derived from the Fourier Transform of the audio clip. In this technique the frequency bands are positioned logarithmically, whereas in the Fourier Transform the frequency bands are not positioned logarithmically. As the frequency bands are positioned logarithmically in MFCC, it approximates the human system response more closely than any other system. These coefficients allow better processing of data .In the Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients the calculation of the Mel Cepstrum is same as the real Cepstrum except the Mel Cepstrums frequency scale is warped to keep up a correspondence to the Mel scale. The Mel scale was projected by Stevens, Volkmann and Newman in 1937. The Mel scale is mainly based on the study of observing the pitch or frequency perceived by the human. The scale is divided into the units mel. In this test the listener or test person started out hearing a frequency of 1000 Hz, and labelled it 1000 Mel for reference. Then the listeners were asked to change the frequency till it reaches to the frequency twice the reference frequency. Then this frequency labelled 2000 Mel. The same

procedure repeated for the half the frequency, then this frequency labelled as 500 Mel, and so on. On this basis the normal frequency is mapped into the Mel frequency. The Mel scale is normally a linear mapping below 1000 Hz and logarithmically spaced above 1000 Hz. Figure below shows the example of normal frequency is mapped into the Mel frequency.

The equation (1) above shows the mapping the normal frequency into the Mel

frequency and equation (2) is the inverse, to get back the normal frequency.