Low bit-rate speech coders for multimedia communication

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has recently standardized three speech coders which are applicable to low-bit-rate multimedia communications. ITU Rec. G.729 8 kb/s CS-ACELP has a 15 ms algorithmic codec delay and provides network-quality speech. It was originally designed for wireless applications, but is applicable to multimedia communications as well. Annex A of Rec. G.729 is a reduced-complexity version of the CS-ACELP coder. It was designed explicitly for simultaneous voice and data applications that are prevalent in low-bit-rate multimedia communications. These two coders use the same bitstream format and can interoperate. The ITU Rec. G.723.1 6.3 and 5.3 kb/s speech coder for multimedia communications was designed originally for low-bit-rate videophones. Its frame size of 30 ms and one-way algorithmic codec delay of 37.5 ms allow for a further reduction in bit rate compared to the G.729 coder. In applications where low delay is important, the delay of G.723.1 may be too large. However, if the delay is acceptable, G.723.1 provides a lower-complexity alternative to G.729 at the expense of a slight degradation in quality. This article describes the attributes of speech coders such as bit rate, complexity, delay, and quality. Then it discusses the basic concepts of the three new ITU coders by comparing their specific attributes. The second part of this article describes the standardization process for each of these coders.