Method of recognizing speech pauses

Claim 1

Method for generating a speech pause signal indicating a speech pause in an analog speech signal having noise signals superimposed thereon, comprising the steps of: generating a clock signal T(n) at predetermined clock instants; sampling said speech signal at a plurality of sampling instants between sequential ones of said clock instants, thereby creating a plurality of sampling value signals between every two sequential clock instants; filtering said sampling value signals to generate a short-time mean value signal representing the average value thereof at each of said clock instants; generating a series of estimated noise power signals, each at one of said clock instants, each at least in part varying in dependence on the corresponding one of said short-time mean value signals; filtering said short-time mean value signals thereby generating a smoothed mean value signal; generating a threshold signal varying in dependence on said estimated noise power signal at each of said clock instants comprising combining said short-time mean value signal and a previous estimated noise power signal computed at the immediately preceding one of said clock instants; at each of said clock instants, comparing said smoothed mean value signal to said threshold signal; and generating said speech pause signal when said smoothed mean value signal is less than said threshold signal.