Description of ITU-T Recommendation G.729 Annex A: reduced complexity 8 kbit/s CS-ACELP codec

This paper describes the recently adopted ITU-T Recommendation G.729 Annex A (G.729A) for encoding speech signals at 8 kbit/s with low complexity. G.729A has been selected as the standard speech coding algorithm for multimedia digital simultaneous voice and data (DSVD). G.729A is bitstream interoperable with G.729; i.e., speech coded with G.729A can be decoded with G.729, and vice versa. As G.729, it uses the conjugate structure algebraic code excited linear prediction (CS-ACELP) algorithm with 10 ms frames. However, several algorithmic changes have been introduced into G.729 which resulted in 50% drop in its complexity, enabling a DSP implementation with a complexity of about 10-12 MIPS. This paper describes the algorithmic changes which have been introduced in order to achieve the low complexity goal while meeting the terms of reference. Subjective tests have been performed by ITU-T in both the selection phase and the characterization phase and the results showed that the performance of G.729A is equivalent to both G.729 and G.726 at 32 kbit/s in most operating conditions; however, it is slightly worse in case of three tandems and in the presence of background noise. A breakdown of the complexities of both G.729 and G.729A is given at the end of the paper.