To capture the presence of speech embedded in nonspeech events and background noise in shortwave non-cooperative communication, an algorithm for speech-stream detection in noisy environments is presented based on Empirical Mode Decomposition （EMD） and statistical properties of higher-order cumulants of speech signals. With the EMD, the noise signals can be decomposed into different numbers of IMFs. Then, the fourth-order cumulant （ FOC ） can be used to extract the desired feature of statistical properties for IMF components. Since the higher-order eumulants are blind for Gaussian signals, the proposed method is especially effective regarding the problem of speech-stream detection, where the speech signal is distorted by Gaussian noise. With the self-adaptive decomposition by EMD, the proposed method can also work well for non-Gaussian noise. The experiments show that the proposed algorithm can suppress different noise types with different SNRs, and the algorithm is robust in real signal tests.
