2012 9th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control
Mexico City, Mexico. September 26-28, 2012
A Novel Adaptive Filtering for Audio Signals
Using Artificial Hydrocarbon Networks
H. Ponce, P. Ponce, A. Molina
Posgrados en Ingeniería; Escuela de Diseño, Ingeniería y Arquitectura
Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad de México; Mexico City, Mexico
E-mail: hiram.ponce@itesm.mx, pedro.ponce@itesm.mx, armolina@itesm.mx
Abstract –– The present paper introduces a novel adaptive
filtering for audio signals corrupted with white noise. The
audio filter is based on artificial hydrocarbon networks
(AHNs), a novel approach inspired on organic chemistry for
stability, well-forming and easy-spanning topologies. In that
sense, an AHN-molecular structure adapts its parameters in a
specific window to cancel signal noise from original audio
sequence using the notion of filtering given by AHN-topologies.
Results of the present approach show that artificial
hydrocarbon networks can achieve audio filtering for noisy
signals. Then, a comparison between AHN-filtering and FIR
filtering is presented. In addition, the AHN-filtering is
implemented on DSP NI-Speedy 33 hardware.
Keywords –– Artificial hydrocarbon networks, audio
filtering, DSP.
I. INTRODUCTION
Many signal processing applications are corrupted with
noise signals. For example: images, sound, data acquisition,
electrical engineering, transmission signals, and so on [1],
[2], [5], [6], [7], [8].
Audio applications are not the exception. Thus, the
usage of audio filters to shape noisy audio signals is very
common [3], [5]. Specifically, white noise is a kind of noise
signal with a uniform frequency spectrum, i.e. it contains
every frequency components with the same amplitude. In
that sense, linear filters do not have good responses and
nonlinear filters such as adaptive filters are proposed.
Tendencies on adaptive filtering cover artificial neural
networks, fuzzy systems, and more precisely, artificial
intelligence techniques [6], [8].
In that sense, this paper introduces a novel adaptive
filtering for audio applications using a recent artificial
intelligence technique called artificial hydrocarbon networks
(AHN) [9], [10], [11]. This algorithm is bio-inspired on
organic chemistry for stability, well-forming and easy-
spanning topologies. In fact, several results presented on
[10], [11] and [9] suggest that artificial hydrocarbon
networks might be used as filters. However, since there is no
previous information about AHN-based filtering, this work
aims to prove filtering approaches on audio signals
corrupted with white noise.
IEEE Catalog Number: CFP12827-CDR
ISBN: 978-1-4673-2168-6 277
978-1-4673-2169-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
Thus, an overview of artificial hydrocarbon networks is
presented in the following section. Then, Section III
describes the proposed adaptive filter using artificial
hydrocarbon networks. In Section IV, experimental results
on noisy audio signals are summarized. One sample audio
extracted from a popular rock song is filtered with the
proposed filter and it is compared with a classical finite
impulse response (FIR) filter. In addition, a DSP NI-Speedy
33 hardware system implements the AHN-filter offline.
Finally, conclusion and future work is depicted.
II. ARTIFICIAL HYDROCARBON NETWORKS
Recently, Ponce and Ponce [10] proposed a new
algorithm inspired on organic compounds called artificial
organic networks (AON). These nets derive from the
necessity of being stable, well formed and easily spanning
structures. [10], [11] and [9] reported the mathematical
formalization and the usage of graph theory to define
artificial organic networks.
In AONs, the simplest unit is the atom. A punch of
atoms can interact among them via a collection of bonds in
order to form molecules. In particular, bonds or links appear
between two atoms only when they have at least one degree
of freedom, so-called valence electrons [10]. In addition,
when a molecule fills up all its valence electrons is said to
be a stable molecule; otherwise, it is considered an unstable
molecule. On the one hand, stable molecules are stable in
steady state and they do not allow forming new molecules.
On the other hand, unstable molecules are not so stable in
steady state but they allow to link new atoms to it in order to
perform complex actions [10]. Furthermore, primitive
molecules are unstable molecules used to generate well-
formed artificial organic compounds [9].
Links are of two types: polar covalent bonds which
links two similar atoms, and non-polar covalent bonds
which links two different atoms [10].
Formally, an artificial organic network is a graph AON
(1) with a set C of primitive molecules Mi of the form (2),
all linked with a collection B of polar covalent bonds; so-
called a compound with functional group G [10]. A is a set
of atoms of primitive molecules and BN is a set of non-polar
covalent bonds of the same primitive molecules. Figure 1
shows the basic structure of an artificial organic network.
 2012 9th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control
Mexico City, Mexico. September 26-28, 2012

of the functional group CH or family (4). Figure 2 shows the

basic structure of an artificial hydrocarbon network.

However, the definition of (6) allows shaping a very

simple compound. In order to improve more complex
compounds, [11] also presents the way to associate different
simple compounds into a more sophisticated compound via
chemical balance inspiration using (7); where {aj} are
constant parameters also known as stoichiometric
coefficients and Mj is any molecule or compound. Figure 3
presents a basic interaction among molecules or compounds.

On the other hand, the algorithm for approximating

Fig. 1. Structure of an artificial organic network.
AON = (C, B) ! G
M i = (A, BN )i
In addition, organic chemistry notices that hydrocarbons
are the simplest and most stable organic compounds [12],
[13]. Based on that fact and assuming a topological structure
like artificial organic networks, Ponce and Ponce [10], [11],
[9] proposed a particular structure so-called artificial
hydrocarbon networks (AHN) which uses the functional
group CH and only two different atoms.
functions proposes that a given function can be divided into
n segments, and each of them can be approximated by n
(1) molecules or compounds selected from a catalog of
molecules (see details on [9]). In addition one CH molecule
(2)
excited with a zero-value offsets the approximation.
Hydrogen atom values and stoichiometric coefficients can
be easily obtained using the least squares estimation (LSE)
method [9]. Additionally, in order to assure stability,
hydrogen atom values have to be inside the real close
interval | H i |! 4 . The optimal artificial hydrocarbon network
structure is the one that cannot be reduced by eliminating
molecules or compounds [9].

The two simplest units of AHNs are the hydrogen atom

H and the carbon atom C, defined as (3) and (4); where, h0 is
a constant value, r is the number of atoms connected to C up
to 4 which is the number of valence electrons associated to
C, and x is the input value in the open interval |x| < 1 [11],
[9]. Interestingly, hydrogen atoms associated to C represent
the zeros of the carbon atom; then, the function of a carbon
atom is normalized and its convergence can be easily
computed using the ratio test [14], [11]. In fact, (4) is known
as the family of all primitive CH molecules inside the
functional group CH [9].

Two or more primitive molecules can be associated

Fig. 2. Structure of an artificial hydrocarbon network.
using a polar covalent bond Bk defined as (5), in which e is
the exponential function and Mi and Mj is a pair of
molecules [9].

H = h0 (3)
r
C = " (x ! H i ) (4)
i=1
M i +M j
Bk ( M i , M j ) = e (5)

Formally, the artificial hydrocarbon network [10] is a

graph AHN defined as (6) under the AON properties. Thus,
an AHN is a compound of primitive molecules Mi linked
among them by a set of polar covalent bonds Bk; and,
assuming that the set of primitive molecules is a proper set
Fig. 3. Interaction of molecules and compounds via chemical balance.

IEEE Catalog Number: CFP12827-CDR

ISBN: 978-1-4673-2168-6 278
978-1-4673-2169-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
 2012 9th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control
Mexico City, Mexico. September 26-28, 2012

AHN = ( M, Bk ) ! CH (6)

AHN = ! ai M i (7)
i

III. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED AHN-FILTERING

This section introduces the proposed artificial

hydrocarbon network based adaptive filtering for audio
signals corrupted with white noise.

Firstly, the original audio signal is divided into batches,
so-called windows. Each window has a finite size measured
in seconds, i.e. milliseconds. Particularly to this work, all
windows are subjected to the same size. In addition, each
window is equally divided into several partitions. Thus,
partitions represent approximating regions for AHN-
molecules. Figure 4 shows a partitioned window.
In that sense, AHN-molecules will approximate the
function of the current window, acting as a filter. Moreover,
the structure of the AHN will change for different windows,
given to it the adaptive property.
The above description is summarized in the following
steps:
1. Determine the size of window tW in seconds.
2. Determine the number of molecules n for each
approximating window.
3. For each window:
a. Determine the approximating region
(partition) size tP, in seconds, using the
ratio between tW and n.
b. For each partition, find the best real values
for hydrogen atoms associated to the
AHN-molecule via LSE.
c. Build the AHN structure with all AHN-
molecules, using (7) via general LSE.
d. Run the proper AHN trained so far.
In order to find real hydrogen parameters as fast as
possible, primitive CH molecules are proposed. This means
that only one of the following molecules can be used for
partitions: CH, CH2 or CH3. Notice that there are less or
equal than three real roots on each molecule. It is precise to
say if complex roots are obtained by LSE, then it has to be
modified in order to find only real roots.
At the end, artificial hydrocarbon networks will act as
an adaptive filter for the original noisy audio signal with few
real hydrogen-parameters.
Fig. 4. Segment of audio signal showing partitioned window.
IV. RESULTS
The proposed AHN-based filtering for audio signals
with white noise was implemented computationally. Five-
second mono-channel audio signal segment sampled at
44.10KHz of a popular rock band was extracted and
normalized. Additionally, it was corrupted with white noise
of variance 0.013. Figure 5 shows the original audio signal
and the noisy audio signal.
In order to prove filtering via AHN-molecules, the
response signal is compared to a classical FIR filter because
its simplicity of implementation and well-known response
for lowpass filtering. For instance, the FIR filter is expressed
as a finite weighted sum of the form in (8); where, x[n] is a
finite sequence of data representing the input signal, bk are
filter coefficients found by designing methods (e.g.,
windowing), y[n] is the output signal, and M represents the
order of the FIR filter [1], [2].
M
y[n] = " b k x[n ! k] (8)
k=0
In addition, the notion of how well AHN-molecules can
filter is measured by the short-time objective intelligibility
(STOI) value, which represents a monotonic relation with
the average intelligibility of filtering signal [15]. In that
sense, STOI metric was selected to measure – in an
objective, non-qualitative, way – the intelligibility of the
filtered signal with respect to the original signal.
Thus, in the first experiment, the proposed AHN were
built using 10 primitive CH3 molecules. The size of the
window was fixed to 20ms with 2ms partitions. Figure 6.a
present the results of filtering the noisy audio signal. In
order to compare it, a classical 30th order FIR of the noisy
signal was implemented (Figure 6.b); cut-off frequency and
attenuation were calculated by spectral analysis.

IEEE Catalog Number: CFP12827-CDR

ISBN: 978-1-4673-2168-6 279
978-1-4673-2169-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
 2012 9th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control
Mexico City, Mexico. September 26-28, 2012

In addition, Figure 7 shows a comparative chart in

frequency domain in which classical FIR filter preserves the
magnitude of the signal slightly better than the proposed
AHN-filter. Graph in Figure 7.a depicts the noisy signal in
frequency domain in which the frequency components of the
clean audio fades out at approximately 2000Hz.

Interestingly, both AHN-filtering signal (Figure 7.b) and

FIR-filtering signal (Figure 7.c) in frequency spectrum show
that lowpass filtering is performed with a cut-off frequency
(a) close to 2000Hz. Since, Figure 7 qualitatively proves that
artificial hydrocarbon networks can perform lowpass filters
similarly to classical filters; STOI values were also
measured in AHN-filtering and FIR-filtering signals
obtaining 0.6036 and 0.7916, respectively. In that sense, the
higher STOI value (e.g., in the interval from 0.0 to 1.0), the
better intelligibility audio signal; thus, the FIR-filter is
relatively 23.7% more efficient than the AHN-filter.

(b)
Fig. 5. Audio segment: (a) original signal, (b) noisy signal.

As notice in Figure 6, the proposed adaptive AHN

structure can achieve audio filtering, at least corrupted with
white noise.
(a)

(a) (b)

(b) (c)

Fig. 6. Audio segment filtering: (a) proposed AHN, (b) classical FIR. Fig. 7. Analysis of magnitude in frequency domain:
(a) noisy signal, (b) proposed AHN-filter, (c) classical FIR.

IEEE Catalog Number: CFP12827-CDR

ISBN: 978-1-4673-2168-6 280
978-1-4673-2169-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
 2012 9th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control
Mexico City, Mexico. September 26-28, 2012
On the other hand, in order to prove implementation of
adaptive AHN filters on hardware, it was implemented on
DSP NI-Speedy 33 hardware. The latter is an educational
board for signal processing that can be programmed using
LabVIEW software [4].
In that sense, the audio signal is obtained through a
microphone connected to the analog input of the NI-Speedy
33. Then, the audio signal is analyzed with the methodology
described in Section III using LabVIEW on a computer. All
the process occurs offline. Finally, the audio signal filtering
is sent to the NI-Speedy 33, which reproduces the signal on
headphones connected to the analog output port.
Figure 8 shows the 3-second audio signal collected from
NI-Speedy 33 sampled at 44.1KHz and corrupted
programmatically with white noise of variance 0.013.
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 8. DSP noisy audio segment filtering:
(a) original signal, (b) proposed AHN, (c) classical FIR.
IEEE Catalog Number: CFP12827-CDR
ISBN: 978-1-4673-2168-6
978-1-4673-2169-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
It also presents the output signal filtered (Figure 8.b)
with a 10 CH3-molecule AHN structure using a window of
10ms (partition ratio of 1ms). A classical FIR filter was also
implemented to compare results (Figure 8.c). Notice that
offline is required to set the latter parameters. If online
filtering is required, real-time techniques may be used; but
presetting parameters is mandatory. As seen in Figure 8,
classical FIR filter achieves lowpass filtering but attenuates
the original signal corrupted with some white noise. In
comparison, adaptive AHN-filter does not attenuate the
original signal but it filters with a cut-off frequency higher
than classical FIR’s; Figure 9 shows it as a spectral analysis
on both proposed AHN-filter and classical FIR filter. Notice
that input signal has the most frequency energy in the range
from 0 to 1000Hz (Figure 9.a). However, audio signal
filtering with AHN-molecules, apparently with 2500Hz cut-
off frequency does not eliminate all white noise (Figure 9.b).
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 9. DSP-analysis of magnitude in frequency domain:
(a) noisy signal, (b) proposed AHN-filter, (c) classical FIR-filter.
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 2012 9th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control
Mexico City, Mexico. September 26-28, 2012
Audio signal filtering with FIR filter cancels noise much
more efficiently at 2000Hz cut-off frequency (Figure 9.c).
The qualitative comparison above is also complemented
with the quantitative STOI metric; in which, filtered audio
signal by the AHN-filter has a 0.6662 STOI value
contrasting with the 0.9668 STOI value obtained from the
filtered audio signal using the FIR-filter. Thus, FIR-filter is
relatively 31.1% more efficient than the AHN-filter.
In particular, the cut-off frequency of the AHN-filter is
explained by the partition ratio coefficient tP because it
relates the accuracy of the approximation. Let suppose that
the window size is fixed to be tW* and the number of data
points inside the window is (n + 1). Then, the maximum
number of molecules used for approximate the (n + 1) data
points is n. If fact, the number of AHN-molecules (or
partitions) used for approximate the data points lies on the
closed interval [1, n]. Finally, if the partition size is the ratio
between tW* and the number of AHN-molecules, then tP lies
on the closed interval [tW*, tW*/n]. Because the better
approximating function is done with n molecules, the
smaller tP represents it, e.g. tW*/n. In that sense, a better
approximation means a higher value of cut-off frequency for
lowpass filters such as the proposed AHN-filter.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper introduces a novel adaptive filter using
artificial hydrocarbon networks. In fact, previous works
suggest that AHNs might be used as filtering, but there were
no approaches. In that sense, this paper aims to show that
AHNs can perform filtering.
Using the description of the proposal, experimental
results reveal that artificial hydrocarbon networks can
perform lowpass audio filtering in signals corrupted with
white noise. In addition, the proposed AHN-filter lies on
nonlinear, adaptive filtering in which hydrogen-parameters
characterize the whole AHN-structure. In order to conform
the AHN topology, a partitioned window was defined to set
the number of molecules used for filtering. Moreover, the
size of the window tW and the number of molecules n define
the partition ratio tP needed to set the proper artificial
hydrocarbon network filter. It was observed that the ratio
coefficient is fundamental in AHN-filtering because it
relates the accuracy of the approximation; and, the better
accuracy, the greater cut-off frequency for lowpass filtering.
On the other hand, the proposed adaptive AHN-filter
was implemented offline on DSP hardware. In that way,
parameter settings are done during the offline training
process of the artificial hydrocarbon network.
IEEE Catalog Number: CFP12827-CDR
ISBN: 978-1-4673-2168-6
978-1-4673-2169-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
Both extracted sample of recording and audio speech
implementation on DSP prove that artificial hydrocarbon
networks can perform audio filtering on signals with white
noise. Comparisons between AHN-filters and FIR-filters
were done, and similar responses were derived. In particular,
spectral analysis and STOI metrics were used. In fact, AHN
structures can perform filtering applications, but a better
algorithm to train them is also needed for more accuracy.
Further work on audio filtering applications using
artificial hydrocarbon networks focuses on other
methodologies that minimize the amount of time required
for training AHN-filters. Additionally, because AHNs
primary centers on approximating functions, it might be
used for audio compression applications, too.
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