Picturetel Corporation

Brant Martin Helf

Peter L Chu

Antony Henry Crossman

Samples of an audio signal are converted into grouped frames of transformed transform coefficients, each frame having a plurality of regions (subbands). The power in each region is determined, quantized and encoded. A predetermined number of categorizations are applied to the transform coefficients in the plurality of regions. Each categorization assigns to each one of the regions a selected one of a plurality of different scalar nonuniform quantization step sizes. The step size is selected in accordance with the quantized power in the region and the quantized powers in all the regions. The quantized power encoded transform coefficients and an identification of the selected categorization are variable-length encoded and transmitted to a decoder. During decoding, the power of the transform coefficients in each of the regions is reconstructed from the quantized and encoded power. The selected one the categorizations used by the encoder is determined from the transmitted identification thereof. The quantization step size for each region is determined from the determined categorization and the transmitted quantized power. The quantized and encoded transform coefficients are reconstructed into transform coefficients from the determined step size. The reconstructed transform coefficients are transformed into the audio signal.

Variable length coding using a plurality of region bit allocation

The invention features a method of transmitting a digital signal which includes frames of frequency coefficients arranged in bands. For each frame, the method includes generating a spectral estimate of the energy in each of the bands, a class value that corresponds to the energy in a band relative to the average energy in the other bands for each of the bands, and a step size for each of the frequency coefficients based on the spectral estimate for the corresponding band. The step size varies with the energy in the band so that the step size for a frequency coefficient in a band having relatively high energy is larger than the step size for a frequency component in a band having relatively low energy. The frequency coefficients are then quantized, based on the relationship between the value of the frequency coefficient, the corresponding class value, and the corresponding step size, to produce quantized frequency coefficients. These quantized frequency coefficients are then encoded based on the class values to produce encoded quantized frequency coefficients. Thereafter, the class values are iteratively modified and the steps of generating class values and step sizes and quantizing and encoding the frequency coefficients are repeated until the number of bits that represent the encoded quantized frequency coefficients is optimized. Finally, the encoded quantized frequency coefficients are transmitted.

Fixed bit rate speech encoder/decoder

Properties of human audio perception are used to perform spectral and time masking to reduce perceived loudness of noise added to the speech signal. A signal is divided temporally into blocks which are then passed through notch filters to remove narrow frequency band components of the noise. Each block is then appended to part of the previous block in a manner which avoids block boundary discontinuities. An FFT is then performed on the resulting larger block, after which the spectral components of the signal are fed to a background noise estimator. Each frequency component of the signal is analyzed with respect to the background noise to determine, within various confidence levels, whether it is pure noise or a noise-and-signal combination. The frequency band's gain function is determined, based on the confidence levels. A spectral valley finder detects and fills in spectral valleys in the frequency component gain function, after which the function is used to modify the magnitude components of the FFT. An inverse FFT then maps the signal back from the frequency domain to the time domain to give a frame of noise-reduced signal. This signal is then multiplied by a temporal window and joined to the previous frame's signal to derive the output.

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Melrose, MA, United States of America

Brant Martin Helf