A joint source-channel speech coder using hybrid digital-analog (HDA) modulation

A joint source-channel coding system for transmitting speech on a bandlimited additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel is presented. The proposed method uses a hybrid of digital and analog modulation techniques. The digital part of the system consists of a Federal Standard 1016 code-excited linear predictive (FS 1016 CELP) speech coder followed by a rate-3/5 parallel concatenated (turbo) error correcting code. The analog part, which transmits the quantization error due to the FS 1016 CELP coder, consists of a linear encoder and decoder. The advantage of the proposed system is that it achieves excellent rate-distortion/capacity performance that is common in digital systems while maintaining a "graceful degradation" characteristic that is common in analog systems. Comparisons are made with three purely digital systems and an analog system-with all systems operating at the same overall rate. A formal listening test shows that, at high channel SNR, the improved performance of the proposed hybrid system (versus the purely digital systems) is noticeable to the average listener. Finally, an informal listening test indicates that at low channel SNR (where the error correcting code breaks down) the decoded speech of the hybrid system is still intelligible.