Helium Speech Unscramblers - A Critical Review of the State-of-the-Art.
Abstract
The development of saturation diving has enabled man to work in the sea at great depths and for long periods of time. This advance has resulted, in part, as a consequence of the substitution of helium for nitrogen in breathing gas mixtures. However, the utilization of HeO2 breathing mixtures at high ambient pressures has caused problems in speech communication; in turn, electronic aids have been developed to improve diver communication. These helium speech unscramblers attempt to process variously the grossly unintelligible speech resulting from the effects of helium-oxygen breathing mixtures and ambient pressure, and to reconstruct such signals in order to provide adequate voice communication. The report presents a discussion of the effects of HeO2/P on speech and then describes some of the techniques used to 'unscramble' the distorted speech. Included among the techniques are: frequency subtraction, tape recorder playback, vocoder approaches, digital coding and convolution processing. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1972
- Accession Number
- AD0753526
Entities
People
- Harry Hollien
- Howard B. Rothman
- Thomas Giordano
Organizations
- University of Florida