Abstract: This paper proposes a robust Chinese tone extraction algorithm based on the human auditory mechanism and short-term stationary of Chinese speech. In this method, we use the pooled correlogram based on human auditory model to extract the pitch of speech. An unsupervised lateral inhibitory network is used to get the peak position, which simulates the lateral inhibitory phenomenon in human auditory system. The pitch restriction between successive frames of speech is imposed to get rid of misjudgement in the output of lateral inhibitory network. As shown in the experiments, the method can extract Chinese tone quite well even in rather low SNR cases. It can separate the individual tone clearly as two speakers talk simultaneously.

Key words: pitch, lateral inhibitory neural network, tone extraction, auditory model