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Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research J SCI IND RES VOL 70 APRIL 2011
Vol. 70, April 2011, pp. 270-272

Automatic isolated digit recognition system: an approach using HMM

Kritika Nimje 1* and Madhu Shandilya2

Electronics and Communication Department, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, India

Received 18 August 2010; revised 10 February 2011; accepted 17 February 2011

This study presents design and development of an automatic isolated digit recognition system (AIDRS) using Hidden
Markov Model (HMM). Basic model of the system is able to recognize spoken digit utterances in English. Implementation part
has been done by using Hidden Markov Toolkit (HTK). System is found successful and can identify spoken digit at 89.2%
recognition rate, which is well acceptable rate of accuracy for speech recognition.

Keywords: Automatic isolated digit recognition system (AIDRS), Hidden Markov Model (HMM), Speech recognition

Introduction Experimental Section

Human-computer interaction via speech involves
speech recognition (SR) and speech synthesis 1 . SR, which
is conversion of speech signal into text, has been one of
the most difficult problems to solve 2 . Speech has potential
to be a better interface than other computing devices
(keyboard or mouse) used3 . SR finds its use in a wide
variety of applications ranging from voice based
command control to dictation system or assistance system
for physically challenged people. Automated Speech
Recognition4 (ASR) is the ability of a machine or program
to recognize voice commands or take dictation, which
involves ability to match a voice pattern against a provided
or acquired vocabulary. Hidden Markov Model (HMM)
has been used as classifier for isolated digit recognition
for English numbers5-8. HMM is preferred method for
SR because it provides a simple and flexible mechanism
for modeling sequences of variable length. Later many
practical approaches utilizing different statistical models
introduced noticeable improvements to speed and
accuracy9 . Numerous R & D have been taken place in
various languages in recent years11-16.
This study presents a new SR system, automatic
isolated digit recognition system (AIDRS) that uses HMM
as classifier for isolated digit recognition for English
numbers.
*Author for correspondence
E-mail: kritika_nimje2005@rediffmail.com
Design and Development of Automatic Isolated Digit
Recognition System (AIDRS)
A complete ASR system based on HMM (Fig. 1)
was developed and designed with two phases: i) Training
phase, which creates knowledge about speech and store
and organize the system knowledge gained; and ii)
Verification phase, which figures out the meaning of input
speech given in testing phase and this is done with HMM
models. Input to isolated digit recognition system
(Fig. 2) is spoken digit, which are converted into its
corresponding text.
Training Phase (TP)
TP accepts speech samples from different people
and trains the system to create acoustic models for each
word in vocabulary. A limited vocabulary is chosen for
forming speech models. Digits are converted into acoustic
models statistically characterized as HMM. TP
undergoes through two stages: i) Data preparation, which
involves fixing vocabulary; and ii) Recording data, which
involves in order creating transcription files, coding data,
creating word models, creating flat start word models,
re-estimate models, and fixing silence models.
Verification Phase (VP)
VP displays 5 random numbers between 0 and 9
and asks user to pronouns those digits. Utterance for
each number is recorded as test data, which is decoded
to recognize spoken words. VP also consists of several
 NIMJE & SHANDILYA : HMM BASED SPEECH RECOGNITION SYSTEM 271

TRAIN TRAINING Training Phase Verification Phase

TRANSCRIPTION
SPEECH MODULE

Building Word
Network
Data
HMM MODELS
Preparation Recognizing
Test Data

Constructing
RECOGNITION Creating Dictionary
TEST Monophone
MODULE TRANSCRIPTION
SPEECH HMM Data
Preparation

Fig. 1— HMM based speech recognition system

Fig. 2 — Isolated digit recognition system

Training Phase
of which 12 were as number of MFCC coefficients, and
Training
of which 0.97 were as pre-emphasis coefficients10 .
Wave
Data
Init ialize
HCopy
Re -estimate
HERest
Modify
HHEd
HMMs were trained on 1400 speech samples and were
Training
used for testing 500 samples from 20 speakers. In HMM
Wave
Data Feature Acoustic
training, it was tested on Baum Welch algorithm and
Extraction
HCopy
Configuration Model Viterbi algorithm. Number of states for each word is 7
Testing and was modeled using Left Right (LR) HMM topologies.
Wave
Data Testing Search
Compare with
answers Accuracy
HTK was used for designing and testing SR systems
Wave HVite
Data
HResult throughout all experiments. Baseline system was initially
designed as a phoneme level recognizer with three active
Construct
Rules and
Wordnet states; one Gaussian mixture per state, continuous,
HParse
Dictionary
left-to-right, and no skip HMM models. Training was done
Verification Phase
for a fixed number of iterations (up to 3 iterations).
Recognition rate of trained HMM is defined as11

Fig. 3 — HTK tools used for isolated digit recognition at Recognition Correctrecognition
Rate = x 100%
different phases Total number of testing samples for research digit

steps to pass through in order as recording data, building
word network, constructing a dictionary and recognizing
test data.
For implementing HMM for present isolated digit
recognition system, Hidden Markov Model Toolkit
(HTK)10 is used. HTK is a toolkit (Fig. 3) for building
HMMs. All functionality of HTK is built into library
modules and tools.
Results and Discussion
In the experiment, database consists of 10 digits.
System parameters were: sampling rate with a 16 bit
sample resolution, 16 KHz; Hamming window duration
(step size, 10 ms), 32 ms; and MFCC coefficients, 22 as
length of cepstral leftering and 26 filter bank channels,
Number of correct and incorrect recognition was
found out (Table 1). and Table 2 shows Accuracy
percentage for each digit was found as follows: 0, 89.36;
1, 80; 2, 90.91; 3, 89.58; 4, 89.28; 5, 94.64; 6, 91.67; 7,
87.23; 8, 89.65; and 9, 87.5%. Table 2 shows digits that
were picked in case of miss-recognition for all digits were:
Among all, digit 1 produced lowest recognition rate,
because digit 1 is confused with digit 7 and digit 5 for
most of the time. Digit 1 wrongly recognized as 7 for
15.56% of times and as 5 for 4.44% of times. This has
probably occurred due to pronunciation of digit 1 is almost
similar to digit 7. Sound of one in digit 1 and “ven” in digit
7 leads to similarity of the values of feature vectors for
each digit. The system tends to recognize the digit 1 as 7.
Therefore, digit 1 wrongly recognized as digit 7 for 15.56%
of times.
272 J SCI IND RES VOL 70 APRIL 2011

Table 1—Confusion matrix for each digit accuracy

Recognized digit
% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
1 80 0 0 0 4.44 0 15.56 0 0 0
2 0 90.91 0 5.45 0 0 0 0 3.64 0
3 0 4.16 89.58 0 0 4.16 0 0 2.1 0
Uttered digit

4 0 0 0 89.29 7.14 0 0 0 0 3.57

5 0 1.78 0 0 94.64 3.58 0 0 0 0
6 0 0 2.08 0 0 91.67 6.25 0 0 0
7 0 0 0 4.26 0 0 87.23 0 0 8.51
8 0 0 0 3.45 0 6.9 0 89.65 0 0
9 0 0 5 0 5 2.5 0 0 87.5 0
0 0 0 4.25 4.25 0 2.14 0 0 0 89.36

Table 2—Digits that were picked in case of miss-recognition for
all digits
Digit Mostly confused with
0 3,6,4
1 5,7
2 4,9
3 2,6,9
4 0,5
5 6
6 3,7
7 0,4
8 4,6
9 3,5,6
The system is relatively successful, as it can identify
spoken digit at an average rate of 89.2%, which is
relatively high given that the size of present training corpus
is rather small. Presently, system can be used only for
isolated word single digit reorganization and it can be
enhanced to perform user authentication based on speech
and also accommodate connected digits. The system can
be enhanced to a larger vocabulary including alphabets
and commonly used words. The system can be made
robust by using larger database for training.
Conclusions
A newly designed and developed SR system,
AIDRS, is able to recognize spoken digit utterances in
English. System is found successful and can identify
spoken digit at 89.2% recognition rate, which is well
acceptable rate of accuracy for speech recognition.
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