This paper proposes a new speech codec based on CELP for PHS multimedia communication. PHS portable terminals should consume as little power as possible, and the codec used in them has to be robust against channel errors. Therefore, the proposed codec operates with low computational complexity while reducing the deterioration in speech quality due to channel errors. This codec uses two new schemes to reduce computational complexity. One is moving average scalar quantization for the filter coefficients of the synthesis filter. This scheme requires 90% less complexity to quantize synthesis filter coefficients compared to the widely used vector quantization. The other is pre-selection for selecting an algebraic codebook used as random excitation source. An orthogonalization scheme is used for stable pre-selection. Deterioration of speech quality is suppressed by using CRC and parameter estimation for error protection. Two types of codec are proposed: a 10-ms frame type that transmits 160 bits every 10-ms and a 15-ms frame type that transmits 160 bits every 15 ms. The computational complexity of these codecs is less than 5 MOPS. In a nochannel error environment, the speech quality is equal to that of ITU-TG.726 at 32.0 kbit/s. With 0.3% channel error, both codecs offer more comfortable conversation than G.726. Moreover, at 1.0% channel error, the 10-ms frame type still provides comfortable conversation.

In this paper, the error performance of block coded 8-PSK modulation systems of length 32, designed for unequal error protection (UEP) of messages transmitted over a Rayleigh fading channel, is investigated. Computer simulation are reported showing that, with transmission over a Rayleigh fading channel, a good improvement in coding gain is obtained by the use of a binary linear UEP (LUEP) code as a constituent code in the multilevel construction, compared with conventional block coded modulation (BCM) of the same length.

An algorithm for finding the unequal error protection (UEP) capability of a q-ary image of a low-rate qm-ary cyclic code is presented by combining its concatenated structure with the UEP capability of concatenated codes. The results are independent of a choice of a basis to be used for expanding an element over GF (qm) into GF (q). A table of the UEP capability of binary images of low-rate Reed-Solomon codes over GF (26) is given. It is shown that the encoding and decoding algorithms for superimposed concatenated codes can be applied to a q-ary image as a linear UEP code.

Recently, a lot of research works have been carried out regarding intelligent communication. If the final information sink is assumed as a human being, a communication channel can be used more effectively when encoders/decoders work "intelligently" or take into account of the semantics of information to be sent. We have been studying error-controlling systems based on different importance of segmental information. The system divides the information input into segments to which individual importance can be assigned. The segments are individually encoded by appropriate error-correcting codes (ECCs) which correspond to their importance among codes with different error-correcting capabilities. For the information that difference of the importance is systematically aligned, conventional UEP (unequal error protection) codes can be applied, but we treat the case that alignment of the importance of the information source is not systematically aligned. Since the system uses multiple ECCs with different (n,k,d) parameters, information regarding what length of the next codeword is required for decoding. We propose error controlling schemes using mulriple ECCs; the first scheme and the second scheme use the obvious codelength identifying information. In the second scheme, information bits are sorted so that segments with the same importance can be encoded by an ECC with the same error-correcting capability. The third scheme is a main proposal in this paper and uses Variable Capability Coding scheme (VCC) which uses some ECCs having different error-correcting capabilities and codelengths. A sequence encoded by the VCC is separable into appropriate segments without obvious codelength identifying information when the channel error probability is low. Subsequently, we evaluate these schemes by coderate when (1) error correcting capability (2) codelength identifying capability are the same. One of the feature of VCC is the capability of resuming from propagative errors because errors beyond the codelength identifying capability occur and the proper beginning of the codeword is lost in the decoder. We also evaluate this capability as (3) resynchronizing capability.

Recently there has been considerable interest in coded modulation schemes that offer multiple levels of error protection. That is, constructions of (block or convolutional) modulation codes in which signal sequences associated with some message symbols are separated by a squared Euclidean distance that is larger than the minimum squared Euclidean distance (MSED) of the code. In this paper, the trellis structure of linear unequal-error-protection (LUEP) codes is analyzed. First, it is shown that LUEP codes have trellises that can be expressed as a direct product of trellises of subcodes or clouds. This particular trellis structure is a result of the cloud structure of LUEP codes in general. A direct consequence of this property of LUEP codes is that searching for trellises with parallel structure for a block modulation code may be useful not only in analyzing its structure and in simplifying its decoding, but also in determining its UEP capabilities. A basic 3-level 8-PSK block modulation code is analyzed under this new perspective, and shown to offer two levels of error protection. To illustrate the trellis structure of an LUEP code, we analyze a trellis diagram for an extended (64,24) BCH code, which is a two-level LUEP code. Furthermore, we introduce a family of LUEP codes based on the |||-construction, using Reed-Muller (RM) codes as component codes. LUEP codes in this family have the advantage of having a well known trellis structure. Their application in constructing LUEP-QPSK modulation codes is presented, and their error performance over an AWGN channel examined.

This paper proposes and investigates an intelligent error-controlling scheme according to different importance of segmental information. In particular, the scheme is designed for facial images encoded by model-based coding that is a kind of intelligent compression coding. Intelligent communication systems regard the contents of information to be transmitted with extremely high compression and reliability. After highly efficient information compression by model-beaed coding, errors in the compressed information lead to severe semantic errors. The proposed scheme reduces semantic errors of information for the receiver. In this paper, we consider Action Unit (AU) as a segment of model-based coded facial image of human being and define the importance for each AU. According to the importance, an AU is encoded by an appropriated code among codes with different error-correcting capabilities. For encoding with different error controlling codes, we use three kinds of constructions to obtain unequal error protection (UEP) codes in this paper. One of them is the direct sum construction and the others are the proposed constructions which are based on joint and double coding. These UEP codes can have higher coderate than other UEP codes when minimum Hamming distance is small. By using these UEP codes, the proposed intelligent error-controlling scheme can protect information in segment in order to reduce semantic errors over a conventional error-controlling scheme in which information is uniformly protected by an error-correcting code.