An efficient algorithm to estimate the instantaneous SNR of speech signals

Abstract

This contribution presents an efficient algorithm to estimate the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio of speech signals. The algorithm is capable to track non stationary noise signals and has a low computational complexity. It does not need a speech activity detector nor histograms to learn signal statistics. The algorithm is based on the observation that a noise power estimate can be obtained using minimum values of a smoothed power estimate. This paper will present this algorithm, its performance, its limits, and some applications.