Search Algorithms for Software-Only Real-Time Recognition with Very Large Vocabularies

Abstract

This paper deals with search algorithms for real-time speech recognition. We argue that software-only speech recognition has several critical advantages over using special or parallel hardware. We present a history of several advances in search algorithms, which together, have made it possible to implement real-time recognition of large vocabularies on a single workstation without the need for any hardware accelerators. We discuss the Forward-Backward Search algorithm in detail, as this is the key algorithm that has made possible recognition of very large vocabularies in real-time. The result is that we can recognize continuous speech with a vocabulary of 20,000 words strictly in real-time entirely in software on a high-end workstation with large memory. We demonstrate that the computation needed grows as the cube root of the vocabulary size.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA457473

Entities

People

  • Francis Kubala
  • Long B. Nguyen
  • Paul Placeway
  • Richard Schwartz

Organizations

  • BBN Technologies

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Algorithms
  • Automated Speech Recognition
  • Computations
  • Dynamic Programming
  • Grammars
  • Hypotheses
  • Information Operations
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • Mathematics
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Natural Languages
  • Recognition
  • Sequences
  • Vocabulary
  • Words (Language)

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Operations Research
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Machine Learning Algorithms