Three new speech coders from the ITU cover a range of applications

Many new speech coding standards have been created in the 10-year period 1987-1996. The author reviews the key attributes that determine what coder to select for different applications. The article then focuses on three new speech coding recommendations from the ITU-T, namely G.723.1, G.729, and Annex A of G.729. They provide good coverage for a wide range of applications that have low bit rate requirements (i.e., from 5.3 to 8 kb/s). In addition to bit rate, the article reviews their delay, complexity, and performance. Also reviewed are the history of these standards, and what considerations influenced the requirements each of these coders had to meet.