Formant Measure of Indian English Vowels for Speaker Identity

Abstract

With the growth of communication technology, reliability and security of communication devices became a challenging job. Voice biometrics are becoming increasingly popular as a promising alternative to traditional passwords to authenticate the user on devices for secure communication. Speech processing technology in voice identification may ensures and secure the user access over a range of systems, devices, and services. The formant frequency is the resonant frequency of the vocal cord. Frame-to-frame formants achieved using linear predictive coding (LPC) analysis technique by obtaining the tops of the envelopes. The source voice for vowel is a periodic signal in combination of fundamental frequency and a random noise generator generates unvoiced consonants. In this study, we used voice test samples of different male speakers from age 15 to 20 years. From each speaker utterance of different Indian English words, including vowels and consonants recorded using a digital audio editor software GoldWave v6.57. Formant frequency extracted from the spectrogram of recorded words using MATLAB 2016a signal processing toolbox. Finally, presented an approach for extracting vowels in the words spoken based on three formant frequencies such F1, F2 and F3. The results has shown the significance of vowels in Indian English words when formant frequency of vocal tract is considered.