ZTE Communications ›› 2012, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (2): 34-44.

• Special Topic • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Noise Feedback Coding Revisited: Refurbished Legacy Codecs and New Coding Models

Stéphane Ragot, Balázs Kövesi, and Alain Le Guyader   

  1. audiOvisual and sPEech foR quAlity (OPERA) Lab., Orange Labs, Lannion, France
  • Received:2012-02-27 Online:2012-06-25 Published:2012-06-25
  • About author:Stéphane Ragot (stephane.ragot@orange.com) received his dipl?me d'ingénieur in telecommunications engineering from Telecom Bretagne, France, in 1997. He received his MSc and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, in 2000 and 2003. From 1997 to 2003, he was a research assistant at the University of Sherbrooke. From 2000 to 2003, he was a research engineer at VoiceAge, Canada. Since 2003, he has been with France Telecom R&D/Orange Labs, France. He has contributed to the standardization of speech/audio coders in 3GPP and ITU-T. Since 2008, he has been vice chair of 3GPP SA4. His main research interests include source coding and speech/audio processing.

    Balázs K?vesi (balazs.kovesi@orange.com) received his degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Budapest in 1992. He received his MSc degree from Telecom Bretagne, France, in 1993 and his PhD degree from the University of Rennes I, France, in 1997. He joined the Speech and Audio Coding Group of France Telecom/Orange as a postdoctoral fellow in 1997 and as a research engineer in 1998. His main research interests include speech and audio compression.

    Alain Le Guyader (alain-le-guyader@orange.fr) received his doctorate in electronic engineering from Rennes University, Rennes, France, in 1978. In 1977, he joined CNET/France Telecom R&D, France. His main research interests include speech and audio coding and audio watermarking. Since 2009, he has been a part-time lecturer in speech and audio coding at the University of Rennes 1/ENSSAT, France.

Abstract: Noise feedback coding (NFC) has attracted renewed interest with the recent standardization of backward-compatible enhancements for ITU-T G.711 and G.722. It has also been revisited with the emergence of proprietary speech codecs, such as BV16, BV32, and SILK, that have structures different from CELP coding. In this article, we review NFC and describe a novel coding technique that optimally shapes coding noise in embedded pulse-code modulation (PCM) and embedded adaptive differential PCM (ADPCM). We describe how this new technique was incorporated into the recent ITU-T G.711.1, G.711 App. III, and G.722 Annex B (G.722B) speech-coding standards.

Key words: speech coding, noise shaping, noise feedback coding, G.711, G.722