The Residual-Excited Linear Prediction Vocoder with Transmission Rate Below 9.6 kbits/s

In this paper we present a new vocoder called the residual-excited linear prediction (RELP) vocoder. The concept of the RELP vocoder combines the advantages of linear predictive coding (LPC) and voice-excited vocoding. In the RELP system, vocal tract modeling is done by the LPC technique, and the LPC residual signal is used as the excitation signal. After low-pass filtering the residual signal is coded by adaptive delta modulation and is spectrally flattened before being fed in the LPC synthesizer. The range of the transmission rate is typically between 6 and 9.6 kbits/s; the synthetic speech in this range is quite good. As the transmission rate is lowered, the synthetic speech quality degrades very gradually. Since no pitch extraction is required, the vocoder is robust in any operating environment.