Kalman Filter Implementation of Subglottal Impedance-Based Inverse Filtering to Estimate Glottal Airflow during Phonation

Subglottal Impedance-Based Inverse Filtering (IBIF) allows for the continuous, non-invasive estimation of glottal airflow from a surface accelerometer placed over the anterior neck skin below the larynx. It has been shown to be advantageous for the ambulatory monitoring of vocal function, specifically in the use of high-order statistics to understand long-term vocal behavior. However, during long-term ambulatory recordings over several days, conditions may drift from the laboratory environment where the IBIF parameters were initially estimated due to sensor positioning, skin attachment, or temperature, among other factors. Observation uncertainties and model mismatch may result in significant deviations in the glottal airflow estimates; unfortunately, they are very difficult to quantify in ambulatory conditions due to a lack of a reference signal. To address this issue, we propose a Kalman filter implementation of the IBIF filter, which allows for both estimating the model uncertainty and adapting the airflow estimates to correct for signal deviations. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) results from laboratory experiments using the Rainbow Passage indicate an improvement using the modified Kalman filter on amplitude-based measures for phonotraumatic vocal hyperfunction (PVH) subjects compared to the standard IBIF; the latter showing a statistically difference (p-value =0.02, F=4.1) with respect to a reference glottal volume velocity signal estimated from a single notch filter used here as ground-truth in this work. In contrast, maximum flow declination rates from subjects with vocal phonotrauma exhibit a small but statistically difference between the ground-truth signal and the modified Kalman filter when using one-way ANOVA (p-value =0.04, F=3.3). Other measures did not have significant differences with either the modified Kalman filter or IBIF compared to ground-truth, with the exception of H1-H2, whose performance deteriorates for both methods. Overall, both methods (modified Kalman filter and IBIF) show similar glottal airflow measures, with the advantage of the modified Kalman filter to improve amplitude estimation. Moreover, Kalman filter deviations from the IBIF output airflow might suggest a better representation of some fine details in the ground-truth glottal airflow signal. Other applications may take more advantage from the adaptation offered by the modified Kalman filter implementation.

Force Measurements Near a Natural Frequency of a Measurement System using Inverse Filters

Accurate time-resolved force measurements for complex experimental systems are important for minimizing erroneous and misleading data. These measurements become difficult when a natural frequency of the system is in or near the expected frequency domain of the time-varying force being applied. In the cases where it is not possible to avoid this occurrence, the experimenter typically abandons the setup. This work presents an inverse filter method to compensate for the dynamic response of the measurement system. A two degree-of-freedom measurement system is used to obtain force measurements with dominant forcing frequencies above and below the first natural frequency of the system. The results show that inverse filtering can be used along with digital low pass filters to correct amplification and phase shift due to the dynamic response of the measurement system to within ±4.0% of total forcing amplitude and ±5.0°. A simple cam follower mechanism is proposed as a method of low-frequency dynamic testing.

Multichannel adaptive deconvolution based on streaming prediction-error filter

Deconvolution mainly improves the resolution of seismic data by compressing seismic wavelets, which is of great significance in high-resolution processing of seismic data. Prediction-error filtering/least-square inverse filtering is widely used in seismic deconvolution and usually assumes that seismic data is stationary. Affected by factors such as earth filtering, actual seismic wavelets are time- and space-varying. Adaptive prediction-error filters are designed to effectively characterise the nonstationarity of seismic data by using iterative methods, however, it leads to problems such as slow calculation speed and high memory cost when dealing with large-scale data. We have proposed an adaptive deconvolution method based on a streaming prediction-error filter. Instead of using slow iterations, mathematical underdetermined problems with the new local smoothness constraints are analytically solved to predict time-varying seismic wavelets. To avoid the discontinuity of deconvolution results along the space axis, both time and space constraints are used to implement multichannel adaptive deconvolution. Meanwhile, we define the parameter of the time-varying prediction step that keeps the relative amplitude relationship among different reflections. The new deconvolution improves the resolution along the time direction while reducing the computational costs by a streaming computation, which is suitable for handling nonstationary large-scale data. Synthetic model and field data tests show that the proposed method can effectively improve the resolution of nonstationary seismic data, while maintaining the lateral continuity of seismic events. Furthermore, the relative amplitude relationship of different reflections is reasonably preserved.

Kalman Filter Implementation of Subglottal Impedance-Based Inverse Filtering to Estimate Glottal Airflow during Phonation

Subglottal Impedance-Based Inverse Filtering (IBIF) allows for the continuous, non-invasive estimation of glottal airflow from a surface accelerometer placed over the anterior neck skin below the larynx, which has been shown to be advantageous for the ambulatory monitoring of vocal function. However, during long-term ambulatory recordings over several days, conditions may drift from the laboratory environment where the IBIF parameters were initially estimated due to sensor positioning, skin attachment, and temperature, among other factors. Observation uncertainties and model mismatch may result in significant deviations in the glottal airflow estimates, but are very difficult to quantify in ambulatory conditions due to a lack of a reference signal. To address this issue, we propose a Kalman filter implementation of the IBIF filter, which allows for both estimating the model uncertainty and adapting the airflow estimates to correct for signal deviations. One-way ANOVA results from laboratory experiments using the Rainbow Passage indicate a an improvement on amplitude-based measures for PVH subjects compared to IBIF which shows a statistically difference with respect to the reference oral airflow (p=0.02,F=4.1). MFDR from PVH subjects is slightly different to the oral airflow when compared to IBIF (p=0.04, F=3.3). Other measures did not have significant differences with either Kalman or IBIF, with the exception of H1H2, whose performance deteriorates for both methods. Overall, both methods show similar flottal airflow measures, with the advantage of Kalman by improving amplitude estimation. Moreover, Kalman filter deviations from the IBIF output airflow might suggest a better representation of some fine details in the ground-truth glottal airflow signal. Other applications may take more advantage from the adaptation offered by the Kalman filter implementation.

Individualized stress detection using an unmodified car steering wheel

In-car passive stress sensing could enable the monitoring of stress biomarkers while driving and reach millions of commuters daily (i.e., 123 million daily commuters in the US alone). Here, we present a nonintrusive method to detect stress solely from steering angle data of a regular car. The method uses inverse filtering to convert angular movement data into a biomechanical Mass Spring Damper model of the arm and extracts its damped natural frequency as an approximation of muscle stiffness, which in turn reflects stress. We ran a within-subject study (N = 22), in which commuters drove a vehicle around a closed circuit in both stress and calm conditions. As hypothesized, cohort analysis revealed a significantly higher damped natural frequency for the stress condition (P = .023, d = 0.723). Subsequent automation of the method achieved rapid (i.e., within 8 turns) stress detection in the individual with a detection accuracy of 77%.

Global feedforward active noise control using a linearly constrained loudspeaker beamformer and a sensor interpolation approach

The key issue of three-dimensional active noise control (3D ANC) problems is that global control is generally difficult, given limited number of discrete sensors. In this paper, feedforward multi-channel ANC approach is proposed to circumvent this difficulty. In view of the model-matching principle and multiple secondary sources, an underdetermined multi-channel inverse filtering (UMIF) system is formulated. With this UMIF system as a design constraint, a cost function is introduced to minimize the noise energy at a large number of control points. This linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) proves effective in broadening the controlled area in a 3D space. Optimal deployment of control points and the regularization terms of LCMV approach are also examined. To implement the proposed ANC system in a non-freefield environment, sensor interpolation can be used to find the frequency response between control points and loudspeakers, with plane wave decomposition and some room response measurements. The proposed ANC system has been implemented on a six-element linear loudspeaker array. Simulation and experiment results have demonstrated that the propose approach has yielded significant noise reduction performance in a large control area.