Real time pitch detection using a digital signal processor

Pitch detection is an essential technique in the various speech processing systems. The pitch period is useful for applications such as the speaker recognition, the speech synthesis and so on. A new frequency-time domain method in order to obtain a fundamental frequency of speech is presented in this paper. The paper also describes the results of the computer simulations and a real time pitch period detector using a conventional Digital Signal Processor. The algorithm uses the Discrete Running Fourier Series (DRFS) for emphasis of the peaks of the speech signal corresponding to the pitch and a new simple rule for the determination of the pitch period.