Shared time division duplexing: An approach to low-delay high-quality wireless digital speech communications

Abstract

Various strategies to provide low-delay high-quality digital speech communications in a high-capacity wireless network are examined. Various multiple access schemes based on time-division and packet reservation are compared in terms of their statistical multiplexing capabilities, sensitivity to speech packet dropping, delay, robustness to lossy packet environments, and overhead efficiency. In particular, a low-delay multiple access scheme, called shared time-division duplexing (STDD) is proposed. This scheme allows both the uplink and downlink traffic to share a common channel, thereby achieving high statistical multiplexing gain even with a low population of simultaneous conversations. We also propose a choice of low delay, high quality speech coding and digital modulation systems based on adaptive DPCM, with QDPSK or pseudo-analog transmission (skewed DPSK), for use in conjunction with the STDD multiple access protocol. The choice of the alternative systems depends on required end-to-end delay, recovered speech quality and bandwidth efficiency. Typically, with a total capacity of 1 MBaud, 2 ms frame and 8 kBaud speech coding rate, low delay STDD is able to support 48 pairs of users compared to 38, 35, and 16 for TDMA with speech activity detection, basic TDMA and PRMA respectively. This corresponds to respective gains of 26%, 37% and 200%.