HIERARCHICAL APPROACH TO FORMANT DETECTION AND TRACKING THROUGH INSTANTANEOUS FREQUENCY ESTIMATION

Formant frequencies, represented by major peaks in the spectrum of spe ech signals, convey important information about speech. The authors pr opose a method for detecting the formants of voiced speech through 'in stantaneous frequency' (IF) estimation using a recursive least square (RLS) algorithm. The accuracy of the technique is assessed by comparin g it with conventional formant detection techniques. This method is al so analysed from the viewpoint of phonetic conformity using 'temporal decomposition'.