Low complexity single microphone tonal noise reduction in vehicular traffic environments

Abstract

A low complexity single microphone Tonal Noise Reduction (TNR) technique is presented for speech enhancement. This method is particularly effective in noisy environments which contain tonal noise sources, such as vehicular horns and alarms. TNR was designed to have low complexity and low memory requirements for use with battery operated communication devices. TNR detects the probability of the presence of these tonal noises which contaminate the desired speech signals. These noises are then attenuated using the proposed system for noise suppression. This is particularly effective for noise sources with a harmonic spectral structure. The proposed TNR system is able to maintain a balance between the level of noise reduction and speech distortion. Listening tests were performed to confirm the results. TNR can be used together with a general noise reduction system as a postprocessing stage by reducing the residual noise components.