Estimation of vocal noise and cycle duration jitter in connected speech

The objective is to describe analysis methods that enable tracking vocal dysperiodicities in running speech. Vocal dysperiodicities here refer to deviations from strict periodicity in voiced speech sounds. Two methods are described. They respectively enable the sample-by-sample extraction of vocal noise from the speech signal or the isolation of speech cycles in voiced segments to quantify perturbations of the cycle lengths and amplitudes (i.e. cycle duration jitter and amplitude shimmer). These methods share the property that they are not based on the assumption that the signal is locally periodic and that the average period length is known a priori.