Low-rate analysis-by-synthesis wideband speech coding

This thesis studies low-rate wideband analysis-by-synthesis speech coders. The wideband speech signals have a bandwidth of up to 8 kHz and are sampled at 16 kHz, while the target operating bit rate is 16 kbits/sec. Applications for such a coder range from high-quality voice-mail services to teleconferencing. In order to achieve a low operating rate, the coding places more emphasis on the lower frequencies (0 to 4 kHz), while the higher frequencies (4 to 8 kHz) are coded less precisely but with little perceived degradation.The study consists of three stages. First, aspects of wideband spectral envelope modeling using Line Spectral Frequencies (LSF's) are studied. Then, the underlying coder structure is derived from a basic Residual Excited Linear Predictive coder (RELP). This structure is enhanced by the addition of a pitch prediction stage, and by the development of full-band and split-band pitch parameter optimization procedures. These procedures are then applied to an Code Excited Linear Prediction (CELP) model. Finally, the performance of full-band and split-band CELP structures are compared