Speech coding in mobile radio communications

Speech coding, the efficient representation of speech in digital form, is one of the key technologies in current and evolving digital cellular and wireless voice communications offerings. The speech coders in existing standards exhibit a level of sophistication and performance unimaginable just 15 years ago. We outline the characteristics of the mobile communications problem with respect to speech coders and point out the principal issues in speech coder design for these applications. Speech coding methods in existing mobile communications standards are described and contrasted. The limitations imposed by the wireless channel and by background impairments are discussed, and approaches to addressing their resulting effects are presented. Suggestions for future research in speech coding for the mobile communications problem are outlined.