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Performance analysis of ASR system in hybrid DNN-HMM framework using a PWL euclidean activation function

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Abstract

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is the process of mapping an acoustic speech signal into a human readable text format. Traditional systems exploit the Acoustic Component of ASR using the Gaussian Mixture Model — Hidden Markov Model (GMM-HMM) approach. Deep Neural Network (DNN) opens up new possibilities to overcome the shortcomings of conventional statistical algorithms. Recent studies modeled the acoustic component of ASR system using DNN in the so called hybrid DNN-HMM approach. In the context of activation functions used to model the non-linearity in DNN, Rectified Linear Units (ReLU) and maxout units are mostly used in ASR systems. This paper concentrates on the acoustic component of a hybrid DNN-HMM system by proposing an efficient activation function for the DNN network. Inspired by previous works, euclidean norm activation function is proposed to model the non-linearity of the DNN network. Such non-linearity is shown to belong to the family of Piecewise Linear (PWL) functions having distinct features. These functions can capture deep hierarchical features of the pattern. The relevance of the proposal is examined in depth both theoretically and experimentally. The performance of the developed ASR system is evaluated in terms of Phone Error Rate (PER) using TIMIT database. Experimental results achieve a relative increase in performance by using the proposed function over conventional activation functions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was an outcome of the R&D work undertaken project under the Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme of Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India, being implemented by Digital India Corporation. We are thankful to Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology Meghalaya for giving us the opportunity to use the necessary equipments required to conduct the research.

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  1. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology Meghalaya, Shillong, 793003, India

    Anirban Dutta, Gudmalwar Ashishkumar & Ch V. Rama Rao

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  1. Anirban Dutta
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  2. Gudmalwar Ashishkumar
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  3. Ch V. Rama Rao
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Correspondence to Anirban Dutta.

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Anirban Dutta is currently a PhD scholar in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology Meghalaya, India. During his PhD tenure he has made significant contribution in speech processing, neural networks and its applications. His domain of research includes automatic speech recognition, pattern recognition and deep neural networks.

Gudmalwar Ashishkumar received the BTech degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from SRTMU, India in 2015, and MTech degree in VLSI design from the National Institute of Technology Meghalaya, India in 2017, where he is currently pursuing PhD degree with the Department of Electronics and communication Engineering. His research interests include speech processing, speech emotion recognition and signal processing.

Ch V Rama Rao received the PhD degree from JNTU Hyderabad, India. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at National Institute of Technology Meghalaya, India. During his PhD, he has made significant contributions in the field of speech enhancement. His research interest include speech technology, pattern recognition, statistical signal processing, signal processing issues in advanced communication systems and design and development of advanced wireless communication systems.

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Dutta, A., Ashishkumar, G. & Rao, C.V.R. Performance analysis of ASR system in hybrid DNN-HMM framework using a PWL euclidean activation function. Front. Comput. Sci. 15, 154705 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-020-9419-z

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