Robust speech decoding: can error concealment be better than error correction?

Digital speech transmission systems use source coding to reduce the bit rate and channel coding to correct transmission errors. Furthermore, in periods of a very poor channel quality error concealment of residual bit errors becomes necessary as channel decoding fails. However, if the channel is clear, channel coding would not be required at all and the speech quality could be improved by allowing a higher bit rate for source encoding. Usually a compromise is taken between speech quality in case of clear channel and error robustness in case of poor channel quality. This paper addresses the problem of a joint optimization of error concealment and source/channel coding. Under the premise of a minimum mean square error criterion for signal reconstruction it turns out that error concealment instead of error correction may be the best choice if source coding leaves su cient residual parameter correlations by less bit rate reduction.