on masking effect

[Ki-Young Park <pkyoung@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear, all.

I am a ph.d student working on the speech recognition.
I am interested in the masking effect to enhance the recognition 
preformance in nosy environments.

Now there are many techniques in speech coding to use masking effect.
In such works, the mechanical coupling of basilar membrane has been
modeld with the spreading function of triangular shape, which 
has been adopted from the psychoacoustic expreriments 
of the raise of absolute threshold of hearing.

In other works to find the basilar membrane mechanics,
the coupling of the basilar membrane segments has been modeled by
the Green function of quite differnt shape from the spreading function.

Then, my interest is to relate both in some way.

What is the physical background of the masking effect is of course
unknown problem and might be the result of high level interations.

But then, what is the physical background of the spreading function
which known to model the coupling of the basilar membrane.

How the basilar membrane mechanics explain the currently used spreading function?


Is there any clue to go on?
Any comments would be greatly helpful.

Thank you.


Ki-Young Park.