Robust Ultra-Low Latency Soft-Decision Decoding of Linear PCM Audio

Applications such as professional wireless digital microphones require a transmission of practically uncoded high-quality audio with ultra-low latency on the one hand and robustness to error-prone channels on the other hand. The delay restrictions, however, prohibit the utilization of efficient block or convolutional channel codes for error protection. The contribution of this work is fourfold: We revise and summarize concisely a Bayesian framework for soft-decision audio decoding and present three novel approaches to (almost) latency-free robust decoding of uncompressed audio. Bit reliability information from the transmission channel is exploited, as well as short-term and long-term residual redundancy within the audio signal, and optionally some explicit redundancy in terms of a sample-individual block code. In all cases we utilize variants of higher-order linear prediction to compute prediction probabilities in three novel ways: Firstly by employing a serial cascade of multiple predictors, secondly by exploiting explicit redundancy in form of parity bits, and thirdly by utilizing an interpolative forward/backward prediction algorithm. The first two presented approaches work fully delayless, while the third one introduces an ultra-low algorithmic delay of just a few samples. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is proven in simulations with BPSK and typical digital microphone FSK modulation schemes on AWGN and bursty fading channels.