On the feasibility of ASR in extreme noise using the PARAT earplug communication terminal

Abstract

This paper presents recognition results for a novel microphone solution for ASR in adverse acoustic environments. PARAT is an intelligent hearing protector and communication terminal implemented as a lightweight earplug. The inner microphone in PARAT captures the speech signal behind a seal in the auditory canal, thus impeding contamination from external noise sources. Experiments on a stereo speech database contaminated with noise show that the PARAT microphone compares favourably with a high-quality noise-cancelling close-talking microphone.