Noise reduction combining time-frequency epsilon-filter and M-transform

This paper introduces noise reduction combining time-frequency epsilon-filter (TF epsilon-filter) and time-frequency M-transform (TF M-transform). Musical noise is an offensive noise generated due to noise reduction in the time-frequency domain such as spectral subtraction and TF epsilon-filter. It has a deleterious effect on speech recognition. To solve the problem, M-transform is introduced. M-transform is a linear transform based on M-sequence. The method combining the time-domain epsilon-filter (TD epsilon-filter) and time-domain M-transform (TD M-transform) can reduce not only white noise but also impulse noise. Musical noise is isolated in the time-frequency domain, which is similar to impulse noise in the time domain. On these prospects, this paper aims to reduce musical noise by improving M-transform for the time-frequency domain. Noise reduction by using TD M-transform and the TD epsilon-filter is first explained to clarify its features. Then, an improved method applying M-transform to the time-frequency domain, namely TF M-transform, is described. Noise reduction combining the TF epsilon-filter and TF M-transform is also proposed. The proposed method can reduce not only high-level nonstationary noise but also musical noise. Experimental results are also given to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.