Characterizing glottal jet turbulence

Air pressure associated with airflow from the lungs drives the vocal folds into oscillation and allows the air to exit the glottis as a turbulent jet, even though laminar flow may enter the glottis from the trachea. The separation of the turbulence from the deterministic portion of the glottal jet was investigated in the excised canine larynx model. The present study is methodological in that the main goal was to examine three methods of obtaining reasonable representations of both the deterministic signal and the residual turbulence portion: (a) smoothing, (b) wavelet denoising, and (c) ensemble averaging. Ensemble averaging resulted in a deterministic signal that disregarded gross cyclic alterations while exaggerating the turbulence intensity. Wavelet denoising can perform an excellent analysis and synthesis of the glottal velocity, but was problematic in determining which levels of analysis to choose to represent both the deterministic and turbulence appropriately. Smoothing appeared to be the most appropriate for phonation velocities because it preserved gross cyclic variations important to perturbations and modulations, while extracting turbulence at what appears to be reasonable levels.