Feature and Dissimilarity Representations for the Sound-Based Recognition of Bird Species

Abstract

Abstract. Pattern recognition and digital signal processing techniques allow the design of automated systems for avian monitoring. They are a non-intrusive and cost-effective way to perform surveys of bird populations and assessments of biological diversity. In this study, a number of representation approaches for bird sounds are compared; namely, feature and dissimilarity representations. In order to take into account the nonstationary nature of the audio signals and to build robust dissimilarity representations, the application of the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD) to time-varying measurements is proposed. Measures of the leave-one-out 1-NN performance are used as comparison criteria. Results show that, overall, the Mel-ceptrum coefficients are the best alternative; specially when computed by frames and used in combination with EMD to generate dissimilarity representations.