Speech and Audio Technology for Enhanced Understanding of Cognitive Radio Users and Environments

Software-Defined Cognitive Radios, which utilize voice as a primary input/output modality, are expected to have substantial computational resources that will be capable of supporting advanced speech and audio processing applications. Yet, there has been little published research regarding how to leverage these capabilities to enhance military mission capability by building on services such as speech information extraction or background noise suppression. Such capabilities go beyond interaction with the intended user of the SDR – they extend to speech and audio applications that can be applied to information that has been extracted from voice and acoustic noise gathered from other users and entities in the environment. For example, in a military environment, situational awareness and understanding could be enhanced by processing voice and noise from both friendly and hostile forces operating in a given battlespace. In this paper, we provide a survey of a number of speech and audio-processing technologies and their potential applications to cognitive radio.