Multiple description coding for wideband audio signal transmission

In audio communications over a lossy packet network, packet loss concealment techniques are needed to mitigate a user´s frustration when perceiving the deterioration of the quality of the decoded signal. Multiple description coding (MDC) is a useful solution to this problem. In this paper, we describe an MDC method to conceal packet losses for wideband audio streaming based on the sample splitting method in the time domain and encoding by an MPEG-1 audio layer III (MP3) encoder. Experiments were conducted to compare the proposed method with several conventional methods, results confirming that our proposed method performs the playback of the decoded signal with sufficient quality for a range of bit rates from 160 to 320 kbps, even with a transmitted packet loss rate of 10%.