Hybrid coding of mixed signals for digital covert audio surveillance
An overview of the requirements of digital covert audio acquisition (DCAA) is provided and a scalable hybrid coder tuned for the coding of intelligible speech in a covert environment is proposed. The codec incorporates linear predictive coding (LPC) and an M-band discrete wavelet transform (DWT) to offer effective intelligible speech coding in the presence of multiple signal sources at bit rates between 8 kbps and 32 kbps. The results of informal intelligibility testing and an analysis of the algorithm's complexity are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed coder.