The Pulsed To Tonal Strength Parameter And Its Importance In Characterizing And Classifying Beluga Whale Sounds

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• Main Authors: Miralles Ricós, Ramón, Lara Martínez, Guillermo-Fernán, Esteban, Jose Antonio, Rodriguez, Alberto
• Other Authors: Universitat Politècnica de València. Departamento de Comunicaciones - Departament de Comunicacions, Universitat Politècnica de València. Instituto Universitario de Telecomunicación y Aplicaciones Multimedia - Institut Universitari de Telecomunicacions i Aplicacions Multimèdia
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Acoustical Society of America 2012
• Subjects: musiq; geo; Martínez; Rodriguez; Beluga; Beluga whale; Beluga*
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3682056; http://hdl.handle.net/10251/37137

Senia A large number of the vocalization studies on mammals are based on time-frequency analysis of the produced sounds. The patterns, which are extracted from the time-frequency representations, determine the classification in the different sound categories. However, there are situations where this pattern related recognition does not allow a precise characterization of the vocalization to be obtained. In these situations, a feasible alternative, which can help by giving the dominant component of the sound, is to measure the strength of the tonal and pulsed constituent units. In this work, the use of a ratio of pulsed to tonal strength is proposed to objectively measure the distribution of energy between these two components. This pulsed to tonal ratio (PTR) can be computed with the aid of the discrete cosine transform. It is demonstrated that the PTR can be obtained with a relatively simple expression without having to go through the time- frequency representation. This work presents examples that show how the PTR can be used to distinguish between two very similar Beluga whale sounds and how to dynamically track the power distribution between the pulsed and tonal components in non-stationary signals. © 2012 Acoustical Society of America. This work was supported by the national R+D program under Grant No. TEC2011-23403 (Spain), the Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEO 2010/040, and the Catedra Telefonica in the Unviersitat Politecnica de Valencia. Miralles Ricós, R.; Lara Martínez, G.; Esteban, JA.; Rodriguez, A. (2012). The Pulsed To Tonal Strength Parameter And Its Importance In Characterizing And Classifying Beluga Whale Sounds. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 131(3):2173-2179. doi:10.1121/1.3682056 2173 2179 131 3