Cepstrum-based pitch detection using a new statistical V/UV classification algorithm

An improved cepstrum-based voicing detection and pitch determination algorithm is presented. Voicing decisions are made using a multifeature voiced/unvoiced classification algorithm based on statistical analysis of cepstral peak, zero-crossing rate, and energy of short-time segments of the speech signal. Pitch frequency information is extracted by a modified cepstrum-based method and then carefully refined using pitch tracking, correction, and smoothing algorithms. Performance analysis on a large database indicates considerable improvement relative to the conventional cepstrum method. The proposed algorithm is also shown to be robust to additive noise.