1School of Studies in Electronics, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur, Chhatisgarh – 492 010, India
2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Utah, USA
3Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Dr. C.V. Raman University, Kota, Bilaspur (C.G.), India
*Corresponding author Email: kavithakur@rediffmail.com
Online published on 7 April, 2014.
The vocal apparatus consist of different parts some of which belongs the alimentary tract and other to the respiratory organs. The whole respiratory apparatus is active in the sound producing mechanism of speech. The thoracic cavity can be expanded and contracted by the respiratory muscles, thus prouducing a current of compressed air from the lungs in case of any utterance (speech). Infact, the production of speech is a supplementary activity to the respiration; this means that, in particular these two functions have a considerable influence on each other. The compressed air from the lungs to larynx, reducing the phonetic quality is a function of lungs healthy/stressed status. Thus the analysis of speech will be a status symbol indicating the lungs stressed/unstressed condition. In present work the stressed condition of lungs is assessed using the FIR filter in which the side lobe configuration is utilized having the same bandwidth of the filter. It is concluded that the shifting of peak frequency with the side lobe slope (design) indicates the stressed condition of lungs. For example, if the peak frequency get shifted to higher level is as good as forcing the air stream at high pressure by the lungs i.e. increase in peak frequency of speech is an indication of stressed lungs, while the pitch remaining at same level as indicated by the filter
Hamming window function, FIR band pass filter, power spectral density, attenuation, vocal cords
