The design of a digital voice data compression technique for orbiter voice channels
Voice bandwidth compression techniques were investigated to anticipate link margin difficulties in the shuttle S-band communication system. It was felt that by reducing the data rate on each voice channel from the baseline 24 (or 32) Kbps to 8 Kbps, additional margin could be obtained. The feasibility of such an alternate voice transmission system was studied. Several factors of prime importance that were addressed are: (1) achieving high quality voice at 8 Kbps; (2) performance in the presence of the anticipated shuttle cabin environmental noise; (3) performance in the presence of the anticipated channel error statistics; and (4) minimal increase in size, weight, and power over the current baseline voice processor.