Application of NB/WB AMR speech codecs in the 30-kHz TDMA system

A new system enhancement method is proposed for the EIA/TIA-136 system offering both channel operational range extension and improved performance within the current operational range. The existing time-division multiple-access (TDMA) (136) speech codec, the IS-641 enhanced full rate vocoder, operates at a fixed bit rate and does not allow the reallocation of bits to channel error protection as channel conditions degrade. The research presented here investigates the application of the narrow-band adaptive multirate (NB-AMR) speech codec and the wide-band AMR (WB-AMR) codec, both originally designed for the 200 kHz GSM channel, in the TDMA (TIA/EIA-136) 30-kHz system. In particular, we investigate adaptively allocating bits between NB/WB speech coding and error control coding within the limited channel bandwidth. Four modes out of 17 have been carefully chosen for the new TDMA/AMR system. Switching between codec rates as channel conditions change produces range extension below a C/I of 15 dB while also improving performance in the existing operational range above 15 dB. We keep the time slot formats unchanged so that our method is completely compatible with existing 136 systems.