Study and implementation of a connected digit recognition system using continuous HMMs

Author(s)

Jaqueline Vieira Gonçalves

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação
• Defense date: 2005-04-19

Examining board members

Luís Geraldo Pedroso Meloni; Rodrigo Varejão Andreão; Plinio Almeida Barbosa; Dalton Soares Arantes

• Advisor: Luís Geraldo Pedroso Meloni

Abstract

In this work, we incorporate a continuous density Hidden Markov Models (HMMC) to a connected digit speech recognition system, based on speaker-independent word models, of the Real Time Multimedia Digital Signal Processing Laboratory at UNICAMP. The previous system is based on discrete HMMs, and the involved theory and implementation details of the continuous model system are presented. The continuous HMMs used in our experiments have the amount of states and mixtures dependent on word length. As well as in the previous system, the training procedure uses a training set of isolated digits in order to provide initial estimates of the continuous models and it also includes additional information of word duration. Moreover, we have also used another training procedure in which the isolated digits models are not used. The recognition rates obtained with those two training forms are also evaluated. Two databases were used to assess system performance, one is a small database for the Brazilian Portuguese and another one is for the American English. We carried out experiments in order to compare the performance of two types of models, discrete and continuous, in a speaker-independent word model application. We also evaluated the continuous HMMs performance using the open source HTK (HMM Toolkit) under the same operation conditions. Finally, performance results of the developed continuous HMMs system for different number of states and Gaussian mixtures are also shown (AU)