Hardware for Detection and Partial Correction of PCM Transmission Errors

In pulse code modulation (PCM) of speech, transmission errors cause changes in the statistical properties of the received samples. Recently published work describes computer simulations of a difference detection and correction (DDC) system which detect errors on the basis of these changes. The system examines the differences between adjacent received samples. If a particular difference exceeds a threshold, which is dependent on the rms value of a block of 64 differences, the quantized sample responsible for this large difference is deemed to be erroneous. A nonlinear filter of the median type is then introduced as a corrector. We now present a comprehensive description of the hardware realization of this system, and present measured results of signal-to-noise ratio (snr) as a function of bit error rate, input power and the error criterion for narrow-band white noise input signals. An improvement of 6 dB in snr is achieved for error rates between 0.2 and 2.0%. The snr results are consistent with subjective impressions of the quality of speech processed by the DDC system.