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*** BACKGROUND ***
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Speech in Noisy Environments (SPINE) Project

Goal
Evaluate speech technology in environments characterized by military
noise

Situation
Significant government investment in speech recognition technology
development has fostered commercial speech recognition systems that
function well in office
environments. However technology evaluations have not adequately
considered environments characterized by military noise.

Challenge
Evaluate speech recognition technology in environments with controlled
generation of military noise. The technologies have potential value, 
for
example, in  voice-controlled systems, messaging and monitor systems.

SPINE Phase 1
    NRL to manage
    Digital Voice Consortium (http://www.plh.af.mil/ddvpc/) to consult
    LDC to distribute data
    Open to research and industrial sites
    Pilot evaluation in 2000 with follow-up proposal for 2001

Primary data from Arcon Communicability Exercises
    22 speaker pairs
    cooperative task involving confusable vocabulary
    participants in isolated sound booths each with different 
parameters

    background noises, handsets, channels and vocoders were varied
systematically
    utterances recorded directly from microphones also via vocoders;
we'll use the clean data
    even clean (low noise) data has some noise plus voice and 
vocabulary
show the effect of noise on the participant
    test series
          22 participant pairs *
       *   4 scenarios (DOD, Navy, Army, AF: varying handset,
environment, channel asymmetrically) *
       *  12 vocoder effects per scenario/scramble
       *   2 participants (each performing in each sound booth)
    each scramble is a random ordering of 12 vocoder effects for each 
of
the four scenarios
    after 4 tests, subjects changes booths

Test Scenarios
Name        Environment A        Handset A  Environment B  Handset B Channel
----        -------------        ---------  -------------  --------- -------
DOD         Quiet                STU-III    Office         STU-III   POTS/STU-III
Navy        Aircraft Carrier CIC TA840      Office         STU-III   HF
Army        HMMWV                H250       Quiet          STU-III   Satellite Delay
Air Force   E3A AWACS            R215       MCE            EV M87    JTIDS

Vocoders Effects
CVSD
LPC
MNRU00
MNRU07
MNRU14
MNRU21
MNRU150
CDR D
CDR E
CDR F
CDR G
CELP

Environments -
-----------
Quiet
Aircraft Carrier CIC - Command and Decision Center
HMMWV - High Mobility Multi-Wheeled Vehicle
E3A AWACS
Office
MCE

Handsets
STU-III
TA840
H250
R215

Channels
POTS with STU-III modem error model
HF
Satellite Delay
JTIDS