68
1, MARCH 2000
An Integrated Error Correction and Detection System
for Digital Audio Broadcasting
Brian Chen and Carl-Erik W. Sundberg
Abstract—Hybrid in-band on-channel digital audio broad-
casting systems deliver digital audio signals in such a way that is
backward compatible with existing analog FM transmission. We
present a channel error correction and detection system that is
well-suited for use with audio source coders, such as the so-called
perceptual audio coder (PAC), that have error concealment/mit-
igation capabilities. Such error mitigation is quite beneficial for
high quality audio signals. The proposed system involves an outer
cyclic redundancy check (CRC) code that is concatenated with an
inner convolutional code. The outer CRC code is used for error
detection, providing flags to trigger the error mitigation routines
of the audio decoder. The inner convolutional code consists of
so-called complementary punctured-pair convolutional codes,
which are specifically tailored to combat the unique adjacent
channel interference characteristics of the FM band. We introduce
a novel decoding method based on the so-called list Viterbi
algorithm (LVA). This LVA-based decoding method, which may
be viewed as a type of joint or integrated error correction and
detection, exploits the concatenated structure of the channel code
to provide enhanced decoding performance relative to decoding
methods based on the conventional Viterbi algorithm (VA). We
also present results of informal listening tests and other simula-
tions on the Gaussian channel. These results include the preferred
length of the outer CRC code for 96-kb/s audio coding and
demonstrate that LVA-based decoding can significantly reduce
the error flag rate relative to conventional VA-based decoding,
resulting in dramatically improved decoded audio quality. Finally,
we propose a number of methods for screening undetected errors
in the audio domain.
Index Terms—DAB, IBOC, hybrid IBOC, digital audio coding,
PAC, channel coding, list Viterbi algorithm, error concealment.
I. INTRODUCTION
S YSTEMS for digital audio broadcasting (DAB) of
CD-quality stereo audio are being proposed and evaluated
for the FM band [1]–[10],[26]. The strategy is to first introduce
hybrid in-band on-channel, (HIBOC), systems, where the
digital broadcast co-exists with the analog FM broadcast. This
phase is a transition to a fully digital system with no remaining
analog FM in the current FM band. In this paper we discuss
one particular aspect of such systems, namely forward error
correction matched to an audio compression algorithm using
error concealment. In particular, we use a convolutional code
concatenated with an error detecting block code. When such
a concatenation structure exists, one can obtain improved
decoding performance for DAB using list decoding algorithms
rather than conventional Viterbi algorithms.
Manuscript received August 26, 1999; revised March 8, 2000.
The authors are with the Multimedia Communications Research Laboratory,
Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9316(00)04404-8.
0018–9316/00$10.00 © 2000 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 46, NO.
In [1], a number of convolutional codes with Viterbi decoding
[11], [12] are proposed and evaluated for new generation DAB
systems with both equal error protection and unequal error pro-
tection [9], [13]–[16]. An outer cyclic redundancy check (CRC)
block code detects or “flags” errors to allow error concealment
and mitigation by the audio source decoder. The inner convo-
lutional code allows efficient soft decision decoding and soft
combining of two sidebands, which could not be done with
some previously proposed DAB systems using Reed-Solomon
codes [3], [4], [9], [11]. Although undetected errors may still
cause significant distortion in the decoded audio, these unde-
tected error events are quite rare with a properly designed CRC.
On the other hand, detectable error events, which typically lead
to only small and insignificant error-mitigation distortion, are
more common. Thus, at the edge of coverage regions, the prob-
ability of error-mitigation events, i.e., the error-flag rate, deter-
mines the overall system performance.
As we discuss in this paper, the list Viterbi algorithm
(LVA) allows considerable improvement in this error-flag rate
over the conventional Viterbi algorithm (VA), especially for
flag rates consistent with high quality audio. Although with
the appropriate choice of path metric (usually correlation
or squared Euclidean distance), the conventional VA, which
finds the sequence through a trellis with the best path metric
[11], is the maximum likelihood (ML) sequence detector for
(unconcatenated) convolutional codes, it is not the ML decoder
for convolutional codes that have been concatenated with an
outer CRC code due to the interdependence of bits in the CRC
codewords. As we show in [17], the LVA [18], [19], which
finds the ordered list of the sequences through the trellis
with the best path metrics, can be used to implement the ML
decoder for these concatenated codes. (A similar concatenation
structure also arises in digital cellular TDMA systems like
GSM and IS-136, although the CRC is applied only to certain
speech bits. The LVA can also decode turbo codes [20], [21],
which may be viewed as a concatenation of two convolutional
codes.) The case is, of course, the conventional VA. The
length of these sequences may be set equal to, for example, one
CRC block, and the CRC decoder is used to select a path from
the list that corresponds to a valid CRC codeword. One can
combine error correction with the error detection required for
the error mitigation described above by using a short list length
and generating an error flag if no paths on the list correspond
to CRC codewords.
Several algorithms exist for producing the best sequences
through terminated trellises, which arise in block-by-block
transmission. (See [18], [19] and references therein.) These
algorithms require known starting and ending states. However,
CHEN AND SUNDBERG: AN INTEGRATED ERROR CORRECTION AND DETECTION SYSTEM
the termination requires a tail [11], [12], thus leading to an
overhead. A new family of LVA’s for continuous transmission,
i.e., transmission without termination tails, has also been
developed [17] and eliminates this overhead.
In this paper we evaluate the suitability of the CRC and
the LVA for digital audio broadcasting and describe results
of informal listening tests using a 96-kb/s audio coding PAC
algorithm [8]. We empirically characterize trade-offs among the
CRC code rate, error-flag rate, double flag rate (error flags in
two consecutive audio frames), and undetected block error rate,
which all affect decoded audio quality. We also report results of
proof-of-concept demonstrations of the LVA for additive white
Gaussian noise channels. (These simulation results can also
be used to predict relative performance for fully-interleaved
Rayleigh fading and Ricean channels.) Our simulations demon-
strate that the difference in decoded audio quality resulting
from the LVA and conventional VA can be quite dramatic,
reducing the error-flag rate in some cases by a factor of 25 (The
reduction in double flag rate is even higher.), thus changing
system performance from a case of point-of-failure with the
conventional VA to an almost error-free case with the LVA.
In Section II we give a brief description of the error detec-
tion and correction codes for the hybrid in-band on-channel FM
systems considered in this paper. In Section III we describe how
the LVA can be used for enhanced error detection and correction
decoding. These decoding algorithms apply to both terminated
and unterminated convolutional codes, the latter case requiring
no terminating tail for each CRC block (continuous transmis-
sion). Section IV describes the results of simulations for evalu-
ating the CRC and comparing LVA-based decoding to conven-
tional VA-based decoding. In Section V we introduce methods
for screening undetected errors. The paper ends with a discus-
sion and conclusion section.
II. CODES FOR HYBRID IN-BAND ON-CHANNEL FM DAB
SYSTEMS
As one can see from the system block diagram in Fig. 1, the
channel code of the proposed DAB system consists of the con-
catenation of an outer CRC code and an inner convolutional
code. The outer CRC code provides a mechanism for flagging
or detecting errors so that the error mitigation capabilities of
the PAC audio decoder may be exploited. The inner convo-
lutional code provides soft-decision error correction capabil-
ities. As discussed below, this inner convolutional code con-
sists of two so-called complementary codes, which are specially
designed to combat the unique adjacent channel interference
characteristics that are inherent to FM DAB. Finally, the LVA
module shown in Fig. 1 exploits the concatenated coding struc-
ture to provide enhanced joint error correction and error detec-
tion capabilities. The outer CRC and inner convolutional codes
are described in more detail in the rest of this section. The LVA
is the topic of Section III.
A. CRC Error Detecting Codes
Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) codes are a class of well-
known linear block codes that can be used for both error correc-
tion and error detection [11]. Such codes are defined by their
69
Fig. 1. FM DAB system block diagram. The channel coder consists of an
outer CRC code for error detection and an inner convolutional code for error
correction. The CRC exploits the error mitigation capabilities of the PAC audio
decoder, and the LVA exploits the concatenated structure of the channel code.
generator polynomials, and the generator polynomials corre-
sponding to several CRC codes of various block sizes are shown
in Table I.
The columns in Table I marked and are both in-
dicators of the error detection capability of the corresponding
CRC code. The minimum distance of these codes is
so each CRC code is guaranteed to detect any error pattern
with or less errors. However, most error patterns with more
than errors are also detectable. In fact, the only undetectable
error patterns are those that are CRC codewords. The fraction of
error patterns that are undetectable is therefore approximately
The overhead is expressed as a percentage of The
CRC codes in the top part of Table I have roughly 6% overhead,
while those in the bottom part have roughly 3–4% overhead.
One can see that as a general rule CRC’s with longer block
sizes have better error detection capability for a given percent
overhead. However, from an audio decoding perspective, one
prefers shorter CRC block lengths since shorter CRC blocks
reduce the number of audio frames for which error mitigation is
required, as discussed in Section IV. Thus, a trade-off is involved
in selecting the CRC block length, and in Section IV we report
simulation results for choosing this block length.
B. Complementary Punctured-Pair Convolutional Codes
Traditional channel coding methods that have been de-
veloped for either white noise channels or channels with a
known, fixed interference power spectrum are not well-suited
for the interference environment in the normally crowded
FM band. Fig. 2 shows a configuration where the digital
audio information is transmitted on two sidebands, one
on each side of the analog host by means of a multicar-
rier modem (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing,
OFDM). In the interference environment of the FM band, the
so-called adjacent channel interference facing some receivers
may completely wipe out (erase) one sideband, while other
receivers may lose the other sideband. Thus, one would like
to be able to recover all the digital audio information even
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TABLE I
CRC CODES OF VARIOUS BLOCK SIZES.
THE NUMBER OF CODE BITS IN EACH BLOCK IS n; AND k IS THE NUMBER OF
INFORMATION BITS. OVERHEAD IS EXPRESSED AS A PERCENTAGE OF k
when either sideband is erased. On the other hand, if neither
sideband is erased, one would like to exploit this advantage
by, for example, being able to receive the digital audio signal
farther away from the transmitter, thus extending coverage
area. Furthermore, even when sidebands are not completely
lost, carriers within a sideband are exposed to differing
levels of interference. For example, the carriers in areas B
of the HIBOC OFDM power spectrum in Fig. 2 are deemed
to be more robust to interference. Areas A are always used,
but are deemed to be more sensitive to adjacent channel
interference. Areas C could optionally be used in a so-called
extended bandwidth mode, yielding a potential increase in
channel coding capability. Potentially, the transmission in
areas C can take place with precancellation techniques [22],
[23], where the self-interference from the analog host FM
signal is cancelled. The bandwidth of areas A + B is for
example about 70 kHz.
One class of channel codes for dealing with these interference
characteristics is the class of so-called complementary punc-
tured-pair convolutional (CPPC) codes [1]. Two convolutional
codes, called half-bandwidth codes, are designed by puncturing
[11]–[13] a mother code. One code is transmitted on one side-
band, and the other code, called its complementary code, is
transmitted on the other sideband. The two codes are comple-
mentary in the sense that they combine to form a single code,
called the full-bandwidth code whose rate is half the rate of the
half-bandwidth codes.
This process of puncturing is a well-known technique
[11]–[13] for generating good high rate convolutional codes
from low rate codes, as illustrated in Fig. 3, where a rate-2/5
code is generated from a rate-1/3 code. The resulting high rate
code can be decoded using the same basic Viterbi algorithm
that is used to decode the mother code. In the example of
Fig. 3, two out of every twelve code bits from the rate-1/3 code
are selectively dropped (punctured), thus creating a code of
rate 2/5. (For every four information bits, there are ten code
bits.) The puncturing pattern shown in Fig. 3 contains a “1” for
each bit that is kept and a “0” for each bit that is punctured.
In conventional punctured code design, the puncturing pattern
is optimized to create only one best high rate code. Kroeger
et al.proposed constructing complementary pairs of codes by
puncturing a particular convolutional “mother” code [10],[26].
A low rate mother code is first punctured to the full rate (full
bandwidth) code used for both sidebands. This code is then
punctured to twice its original rate, forming the first code of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 46, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
Fig. 2. Power spectra of FM HIBOC systems. The digital audio signal is
transmitted on each side of the analog host using a multicarrier modem. The
regions A, B, and C have different interference susceptibility. Region A is more
sensitive to interference than B. Region C is used optionally.
Fig. 3. Convolutional code puncturing. A rate-1/3, memory M = 6 mother
code is punctured with a puncturing period of 4, indicating that the same
puncturing pattern is repeated every 4 input bits. The output code rate is 2/5. In
this paper we have applied the list Viterbi algorithm to a hybrid IBOC system
such as the one described in this section. However, the LVA is also applicable
to other arrangements such as different channel coding, modem and audio
coder choices.
the complementary pair. The punctured bits form the second
code of the pair. The class of codes constructed in this way are
called complementary punctured-pair convolutional codes.
In their work, however, Kroeger et al. do not search for good
codes within this class, i.e., they do not optimize the puncturing
pattern. They also put unnecessary constraints on the class by
only using a particular mother code. In [1] we give good CPPC
codes for a variety of scenarios that arise in HIBOC DAB using a
widest possible search space. These scenarios include equal error
protection, unequal error protection, extended bandwidth mode,
and transmission with variety of compatibility constraints. We
easily arrive at better schemes than classic code combining [11],
and we do not need to require conditions for so-called equiva-
lent codes [24], which are a special subclass of complementary
codes. We also demonstrate that codes that are both CPPC codes
and rate-compatible (described below) punctured convolutional
(RCPC) codes [13]–[15] can be used for unequal error protec-
tion in this setting. These RCPC codes can be time-multiplexed
and decoded by the same decoder without intermediate termi-
nation bits (tails) [13]–[15]. The use of unequal error protection
codes [9] further improves the capability of the channel codes,
yielding extended coverage areas. Finally, we also show in [1]
how puncturing can be used to intelligently assign channel code
bits to carriers to handle the nonuniform interference within side-
bands, leading to further code optimizations [1].
CHEN AND SUNDBERG: AN INTEGRATED ERROR CORRECTION AND DETECTION SYSTEM
III. LIST VITERBI ALGORITHM FOR ERROR DETECTION AND
CORRECTION
When developing a decoder for the concatenated encoder de-
scribed in Section II, it is natural to consider the following two-
stage decoding strategy:
1. First, decode the inner convolutional code using a con-
ventional Viterbi algorithm (VA) [11], which finds a se-
quence through a trellis with the best path metric. With the
appropriate choice of path metric, usually correlation or
squared Euclidean distance, the VA is the maximum like-
lihood (ML) decoder for (unconcatenated) convolutional
codes.
2. Use conventional CRC error detection [11] to detect er-
rors in each CRC block of the decoded VA output se-
quence. If no error is present in a CRC block, send the
block to the audio decoder. Otherwise, send an error flag
to trigger error mitigation.
However, this strategy does not fully exploit the concatenated
structure of the encoder. In particular, the only possible input se-
quences to the convolutional encoder are valid CRC codewords,
and due to the interdependency among CRC codeword bits, the
VA is not the ML decoder in the concatenated case. It is shown in
[17] that the ML decoder in this case can be implemented using
the so-called list Viterbi algorithm (LVA) [18] with a sufficiently
long list size. The LVA finds the ordered list of the sequences
through the trellis with the best path metrics, the case
being the conventional Viterbi algorithm. Both parallel and se-
rial implementations of the LVA are described in [18]. The par-
allel LVA finds all sequences simultaneously, while the serial
LVA determines the sequences sequentially. The serial LVA is
more computationally efficient since the algorithm can be termi-
nated before determining all sequences, i.e., it has an adaptive
list size. Alternative algorithms are described in [19] and refer-
ences in [18] and [19].
With short list lengths one can use the following decoding
strategy on each CRC block for enhanced error correction and
detection:
1.
2. Use the LVA to determine the sequence with the th best
path metric.
3. Use conventional CRC error detection [11] to detect er-
rors in the th LVA output sequence. If no error is present,
send the CRC block to the audio decoder and return to
Step 1 to decode the next CRC block. If an error is present,
increment If return to Step 2. Otherwise, send
an error flag for this CRC block and return to Step 1 to
decode the next CRC block.
With the parallel LVA, all sequences are determined at once in
Step 2 before any CRC error detection is performed. With the
serial LVA, only the th sequence is determined. Thus, if this
sequence is an error-free CRC codeword, then no computation
will be wasted in determining subsequent sequences on the list.
As long as the list length is long enough so that at least one
of the sequences on the list is a valid CRC codeword, this al-
gorithm produces the ML sequence as the decoded CRC block
[17]. Otherwise, an error flag is produced.
71
We see that in contrast to the VA-based decoding method,
where an error correction decoding stage is followed by an error
detection stage, in this LVA-based decoding strategy the CRC
error detector is employed in conjunction with the LVA for de-
coding of the inner convolutional code. Thus, error correction
and detection are performed jointly. Not only does this inte-
grated decoding strategy have a theoretical basis [17], but also
the simulation results of Section IV demonstrate empirically a
resulting decoding performance enhancement as well.
The LVA’s in [18], [19], and references therein are for
block-by-block transmission, i.e., these algorithms make use of
a known starting and ending state, and thus, each CRC block
must be terminated with a tail, as shown in Fig. 4. Although
the encoder is in a known state at the start and end of each
block, this tail leads to an overhead compared to continuous
transmission, where no tail bits are required. Luckily, however,
LVA’s for continuous transmission, which may arise in many
broadcasting scenarios, have also been developed recently [17].
These continuous LVA’s work by first estimating the starting
and ending states for each block before running the previously
developed block-by-block LVA’s. Simulation results in [17]
indicate that the obtainable performance of the continuous LVA
is almost as good as that obtainable with terminated blocks.
For short convolutionally coded messages without the
overhead of a terminating tail, so-called tailbiting convolutional
codes are an alternative, [25]. In [17] we also extended the LVA
to tailbiting convolutional codes.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS WITH DIGITAL AUDIO SIGNALS
To evaluate the CRC outer code and the LVA’s we ran a
number of software simulations and informal listening tests
using actual audio signals and a 96-kb/s perceptual audio coder
(PAC), which has a variable frame size [8], [9]. When the CRC
outer code detects an error, a flag is passed to the audio decoder
for error mitigation for the VA case, as described in Section III.
As is also described in Section III, in the case of LVA-based
error correction and detection, the flag is instead sent to the
LVA, up to list size If no alternative is found that satisfies
the CRC, a flag is passed to the error mitigation algorithm.
For simplicity we assume a Gaussian channel. Other system
simulation details are described in the tables.
A. Performance Measures and Other Parameters
Performance was measured using the following parameters:
• PAC flag rate: Fraction of PAC frames that are flagged as
being at least partially in error, invoking the error mitiga-
tion routine.
• Pair flag rate: Fraction of consecutive pairs of PAC
frames that are flagged as being at least partially in error.
• PAC frame erasure rate: Fraction of PAC frames that are
flagged as being completely in error (erased). No partial
information from these frames is used by the error mitiga-
tion routine.
• Pair erasure rate: Fraction of consecutive pairs of PAC
frames that are erased.
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Fig. 4. Terminated CRC block. The block consists of the information bits,
the parity-check (CRC) bits, and a terminating tail. For a memory-6 code, a tail
length of 6 bits is needed. For a block length of 500, this is an overhead of 1.2%.
• Undetected CRC errors: Number of CRC blocks that are
declared error free, but in fact contain errors.
• CRC block erasure rate: Fraction of CRC blocks that are
declared as containing errors.
• Decoded BER: Decoded bit error rate at output of VA or
LVA.
To illustrate the above definitions and how the variable PAC
frames (in bits) relate to the fixed length CRC frame we give
an example in Fig. 5. In this case 11 CRC frames correspond
to 10 PAC frames. The CRC frames numbered 2, 5, 6 and 9 are
flagged as containing errors. Thus, the CRC block erasure rate
is 4/11. The PAC flag rate is 0.6 (PAC frames 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and
8). The PAC pair flag rate is being contributed to by pairs (2,3),
(5,6), (6,7) and (7,8). Erased PAC frames are 5 and 6. The pair
erasure rate gets a contribution from (5,6).
The additive white Gaussian noise channel is characterized by
its the ratio between energy per dimension and noise
power spectral density. This figure is related to more conven-
tional measures by
where is the rate of the code in information bits per dimension
(e.g., convolutional code rate for BPSK or QPSK signaling) and
is the number of dimensions per symbol (e.g., 1 for BPSK,
2 for QPSK).
B. Codes and Audio Signals
The CRC codes used in our simulations are shown in Table I.
Table II describes the full-bandwidth and half-bandwidth con-
volutional codes that were used. These codes are among many
that have been proposed for digital audio broadcasting [1].
Details about the audio signals are shown in Table III, in-
cluding their lengths in terms of PAC frames and CRC blocks.
Although the frame length of the 96-kb/s perceptual audio coder
varies, the average frame length is about 2230 bits, the minimum
is about 70 bits, and the maximum is about 6690 bits.
C. Effect of CRC Block Length on Performance
Table IV shows the effect of CRC block length. In general,
longer CRC blocks lead to higher PAC frame erasure rates. In-
deed, in informal listening tests more error-mitigation induced
artifacts can be heard when the (1 016 976)-CRC is used than
when the (248 240)-CRC or (506 488)-CRC is used.
D. CPPC Code Performance
Tables V and VI show the results of simulations where the
full-bandwidth (rate-2/5) and half-bandwidth (rate-4/5) convo-
lutional codes of Table II are pushed to the nominal point of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 46, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
TABLE II
FULL-BANDWIDTH (RATE 2/5) AND HALF-BANDWIDTH (RATE 4/5)
CONVOLUTIONAL CODES. THESE CODES ARE AMONG MANY THAT HAVE BEEN
PROPOSED FOR DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING
failure (PAC Flag Rate i.e., the is chosen so
that error-mitigation induced artifacts are clearly audible.
E. LVA vs. VA Performance
Table VII compares the performance of the terminated list
Viterbi algorithm with the performance of the conventional non-
terminated Viterbi algorithm. The was chosen to push
either the VA or the LVA to the point of failure. We see that the
LVA with a list size of 4 is better than the VA by about 0.8 dB
in terms of point of failure. Also, at the point of failure of the
VA, the LVA reduces the PAC flag rate by more than an order
of magnitude. Listening to these signals shows that LVA has a
huge impact.
Because simulation results in [17] indicate that continuous
LVA’s perform almost as well as terminated LVA’s, we expect
similar results for continuous LVA’s. Similarly, Table VIII
shows that there is a negligible difference in performance of
the conventional Viterbi algorithm between the case when CRC
blocks are not terminated and the case when the CRC blocks
are terminated.
The simulations above should be interpreted with some cau-
tion. We do not have statistical significance for the probability of
undetected errors. The number of undetected CRC errors needs
further work. However, it is clear from the informal listening
tests that the LVA with even a small list size like gives
considerable improvement.
V. PROPOSED AUDIO-DOMAIN ERROR SCREENING METHODS
One can view the LVA-based algorithm of Section III
as a joint error correction and detection algorithm that exploits
the concatenated structure of the error correction (inner convo-
lutional) and error detection (outer CRC) codes. In particular,
the LVA exploits the knowledge at the receiver that all inputs
to the convolutional encoder are valid CRC codewords to
provide enhanced error correction capability over the VA (See
Table VII.).
The concatenated structure of the audio coder and channel
coder in Fig. 1 suggests that additional gains may be obtain-
able by exploiting the fact that all inputs to the CRC encoder
are source coded audio signals. Because the PAC audio coder is
nonideal, its output bits do not form a sequence of independent,
identically distributed bits that are equally likely to be 0’s or
1’s. Indeed, it is this residual redundancy that is exploited by the
PAC decoder during error mitigation, which may be viewed as a
sort of audio-domain error correction. In this section we propose
some methods for using this residual redundancy for audio-do-
main error detection, i.e., for detecting errors that were not de-
tected by the CRC or some other error detection method. We at
CHEN AND SUNDBERG: AN INTEGRATED ERROR CORRECTION AND DETECTION SYSTEM 73

TABLE III
AUDIO SIGNALS

TABLE IV
EFFECT OF CRC BLOCK LENGTH. THE CONVOLUTIONAL CODE RATE IS 2/5. E =N = 01 0 dB. DECODER IS CONVENTIONAL VITERBI ALGORITHM
:

TABLE V
FULL-BANDWIDTH RATE 2/5, M = 6 CODE (1111, 1111, 1010) NEAR POINT OF FAILURE (PAC FLAG RATE  10 ): E =N = 01 0 dB. DECODER IS
:
CONVENTIONAL VITERBI ALGORITHM

TABLE VI
HALF-BANDWIDTH RATE 4/5, M = 6 CODE (0110, 1001, 0010) NEAR POINT OF FAILURE (PAC FLAG RATE  10 ): E =N = 3:4 dB. DECODER IS
CONVENTIONAL VITERBI ALGORITHM

times refer to such audio-domain error detection of undetected sented in this section are intended mainly to illustrate the con-
errors as error “screening” to distinguish it from CRC-based cepts involved, and evaluation of these algorithms is left for fu-
or other “channel-domain” error detection. The algorithms pre- ture work.
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Fig. 5. Illustration of the relationship between variable length PAC frames (in bits) and fixed length CRC frames.
Fig. 6. Screening unit for LVA CRC undetected errors.
A. Screening of Undetected CRC Errors
List Viterbi algorithms can significantly reduce the flag rate
for digital audio broadcasting applications. The “price” is in-
creased complexity and possibly an increased rate of undetected
errors. The peak complexity increase with the LVA over the VA
is of the order of L for a list size of L. With the serial algorithm,
the average increase in the number of paths that need to be ex-
plored beyond is very tiny, due to the fact that only a
fraction of CRC blocks need the LVA to begin with. The issue of
complexity needs further work. The results in this paper should
be viewed as proof of concept rather than final algorithm to use
in a practical system. The potential increase in the rate of unde-
tected errors can be alleviated by increasing the number of CRC
parity-check bits. However, these extra parity-check bits, which
increase the redundancy in the system, lead to a decreased data
rate given that the channel bandwidth is fixed.
An alternative to introducing more CRC parity-check bits is
to exploit the already existing residual redundancy of the audio
coder. Fig. 6 illustrates one such method for screening unde-
tected errors. Suppose the LVA decodes a frame in which the
CRC does not detect any errors. (One could also, in principle,
have used the conventional Viterbi algorithm instead of
the LVA for decoding this frame without changing the operation
of the error screening unit that we are now describing.) The de-
coded audio signal corresponding to this frame is denoted
and this signal is compared to the error mitigation signal
that would have been produced by the audio decoder had none
of the sequences decoded by the LVA satisfied the CRC check.
The energy of the difference between these two signals is one
test statistic that can be used for error screening, i.e., an error is
declared and is used in place of if
(1)
or
(2)
where the test thresholds and can be applied either in
the time or frequency domain and the integration interval is one
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 46, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
audio coder frame. Also, this threshold test can be applied se-
lectively, for example, to reduce computational load or to reduce
the incidence of “false alarms,” i.e., false use of One cri-
terion for deciding when to apply the threshold test is to do so
only when the LVA is deemed likely to have introduced unde-
tected errors, e.g., when corresponds to a LVA-decoded
sequence that was not the highest on the list.
One can also reduce the probability of false alarms, perhaps at
the expense of also reducing the probability of error detection,
by adjusting the threshold levels to sufficiently “high” levels,
which can be established by means of experiment. One could
also adapt these thresholds to short term signal statistics, for
example,
(3)
where the overbar refers to short term time averaging of the
error signals over a number of consecutive audio frames,
say 100. Again, the value of can be established by means
of experiment. Thus, is a normalized threshold with a fixed
numerical value (again, chosen based on experiment), and the
threshold in (3) is signal-adaptive. Another signal-adaptive
threshold that is simpler to implement than (3) is
(4)
which represents a short term energy normalization.
As an alternative to (1) and (2), one might desire that the
test statistics reflect perceptual properties of the human aural
system. For example, one can change (2) to include a frequency
weighting function that emphasizes certain frequencies
over others:
(5)
Similarly, one can use a time-domain weighting function to
modify (1). Finally, one may desire signal-adaptive weighting
functions, as well as signal-adaptive thresholds, to account for
pauses in music, for example, during which clicks may be most
annoying. Again, experiments used to establish such weighting
functions and corresponding thresholds are left for future work.
B. Other Channel-Domain Error Detection Methods
The audio-domain error screening methods of the previous
section can be used in conjunction with other channel-domain
error detection methods, for example, when no CRC is used
for error detection. A few such channel-domain error detection
methods are proposed in this section. Again, we leave evaluation
of these algorithms for future work.
1) Path metric difference based detection: The first error de-
tection method, illustrated in Fig. 7, is based on path metric
differences. The LVA produces the two sequences with the two
best path metrics. For example, if the path metric is Euclidean
CHEN AND SUNDBERG: AN INTEGRATED ERROR CORRECTION AND DETECTION SYSTEM 75

TABLE VII
LVA vs. VA. AUDIO SIGNAL IS symph5. THE VA RESULTS HERE ARE FOR CONTINUOUS DECODING

TABLE VIII
TERMINATED (L = 1) vs. NON-TERMINATED VA. (248 240)-CRC, RATE-2/5 CONVOLUTIONAL CODE, E =N = 01 0 dB. AUDIO SIGNAL IS symph5
:

distance, then these two sequences are the closest two convolu-
tional code sequences to the received signal. Since we assume
that no outer CRC code exists, the highest sequence on the list,
the one with the best path metric, is the decoded estimate of the
convolutional code sequence. Since the path metric indicates the
likelihood that the corresponding code sequence was the true
transmitted sequence, if the path metric of the second highest
sequence on the list is close to that of the highest sequence,
then the two sequences are nearly equally likely to have been
the transmitted sequence, and thus, an error is more likely to
have occurred then if the path metrics were farther apart. Fig. 7. Error detection method based on path metric differences. An LVA with
L = 2 produces two sequences. The differences between their path metrics is
Thus, one can detect errors by comparing the difference of used as a test statistic for error detection. Audio-domain screening of undetected
the two path metrics ( PM) to a threshold (normalized and errors follows.
possibly adjusted for transmission conditions). When PM
an error is declared and the error mitigation signal is
used as the decoded audio output. (This condition is similar to
the one when an outer CRC detects an error.) If PM the
audio decoder decodes the audio signal from the highest
sequence on the LVA list, unless the optional screening unit
is triggered. This unit compares and as in Section
V-A and selects instead of if an undetected error is
deemed to be present (using for example the techniques above
in (1)–(5). If not, is selected as the output.
2) Path metric based error detection: An alternative, path
metric based error detection method is shown in Fig. 8. In this Fig. 8. Path metric based error detection with audio-domain screening.
The path metric of the conventional Viterbi algorithm output is compared
case, a conventional Viterbi algorithm (VA) produces one de- to a threshold for error detection. For Euclidean distance or correlation path
coded sequence with the best path metric. This path metric, metrics, this error detection is equivalent to a bounded distance decoding test.
which again indicates the likelihood that the decoded sequence
is the correct one, is compared to a threshold If PM alent to a so-called bounded Euclidean distance (BDD) test. In
an error is declared and error mitigation is triggered. (We as- this case, errors are declared when
sume here without loss of generality that higher path metrics
are better.) If the path metric is Euclidean distance or correla- (6)
tion (with signal energy normalization), then this test is equiv-
76
Fig. 9. Audio-domain error detection and screening. Closeness to the error
mitigation signal s (t) is used as the criterion for selecting a path from the
LVA list. Audio-domain error screening follows.
where and correspond to the received signal and the
VA estimate of the transmitted signal, respectively, is the
minimum Euclidean distance, and is a small correction term
that controls the trade-off between the probability of false alarm
and the probability of detection. Increasing leads to greater
probabilities of both false alarms and error detections. Finally,
audio-domain error screening follows by comparing and
as described in Section V-A.
3) Error mitigation based detection: One final error detec-
tion method is shown in Fig. 9, where both error detection and
screening occur in the audio domain. In this case the LVA pro-
duces a list of the sequences with the best path metrics as in
Section V-A. However, since no outer CRC code is present, the
error mitigation signal rather than a CRC check, is used
to select a path from this list. Thus, the signal that mini-
mizes
(7)
is selected as the output where is the decoded audio
signal corresponding to the th sequence on the list. Also, one
could use the distances from the two best signals in (7) to
in an error detection step that is analogous to the path metric dif-
ference method described above, i.e., if both signals are nearly
the same distance to then an error mitigation flag is pro-
duced and is chosen as the decoded audio signal. Finally,
the audio-domain screening unit of Section V-A determines if
the minimizing is “too far” from If so, then
is also chosen as the decoded audio signal.
This audio-domain error detection method does not use path
metrics and thus, in contrast to the path metric based methods
discussed earlier, the connection between error detection and the
relative likelihood that the decoded sequence is correct is less
direct. However, one might use this ad-hoc method, for example,
in scenarios where the path metric is not matched to the channel
probability law, such as would be the case if the channel model
is uncertain.
C. Extensions
In the schemes of Figs. 7–9, we assume that there is no CRC
code for detecting errors or selecting a sequence from a list.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 46, NO. 1, MARCH 2000
However, even if there is an outer CRC code, one could still treat
the concatenated outer CRC code and inner convolutional code
as one overall channel code and employ error detection using
the methods of this section, rather than resorting to CRC-based
error detection. In this case, the LVA box in Figs. 7 and 9 and
the VA box in Fig. 8 are replaced with the ML list decoder for
the concatenated CRC and convolutional code described in [17].
The output is a list, where each path on the list satisfies the
CRC. In the case of Fig. 8, the output list is of length 1. The
“VA” for the concatenated codes is realized with an LVA for the
convolutional code (with a “long enough” list size) and a CRC.
The “safest” method to keep the probability of undetected er-
rors low is probably the use of a CRC outer code as illustrated
in some of the methods in this section. However, even when
a CRC is not present, an LVA as well as a screening unit can
be employed as shown above. An error mitigation flag can be
generated by other means than with a CRC, which is also illus-
trated above. The preferred scheme is dependent on the partic-
ular source signals, source coders, channel codes and channels
as well as the level of complexity. A mixture of the techniques
above may even be applied. In some systems, (like the GSM
system for cellular mobile radio) only a fraction of the source
bits are protected by a CRC code, for example.
VI. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
We have demonstrated that the list Viterbi algorithm can sig-
nificantly improve the quality of received digital audio by con-
siderably reducing the probability of error mitigation flags com-
pared to a conventional Viterbi algorithm. The LVA is an option
that can be added to the receiver without changing the trans-
mitter. Thus, the LVA is backward compatible with systems in-
troduced with the conventional VA. The improved flag rate is
obtained at the cost of a potential increase in undetected errors
as discussed above and at a cost of an increase in algorithm com-
plexity.
LVA’s for both terminated and unterminated convolutional
codes exist, the latter case involving a so-called continuous
decoding LVA (CLVA). In practice there may be hybrid cases
where both are needed. Fig. 10 shows such a case, where trans-
mission occurs in superframes consisting of CRC codewords
followed by a terminating tail. Thus, over the superframe the
starting state for block 1 and ending state for block are
known. For blocks 1 and a hybrid between terminated LVA
and CLVA can be used. For the remaining blocks, CLVA is
used.
The above results were obtained for the Gaussian channel.
Further detailed experiments are required for other channels.
The LVA is expected to yield considerable improvements also
for interleaved fading channels [18].
Although we have considered use of a CRC code in many
cases, the concept of the LVA is unrelated to CRC codes. For ex-
ample, if there exists a source-based selection mechanism, the
LVA can be operated without a CRC, as indicated in Section V.
Sometimes the CRC code can be combined with source coder
based error detection for improved performance. Some other-
wise undetected errors will be flagged by, e.g., detecting irreg-
ularities in the decoder of a Huffman code.
CHEN AND SUNDBERG: AN INTEGRATED ERROR CORRECTION AND DETECTION SYSTEM
Fig. 10. Superframe of N CRC blocks with terminating tail.
Although our discussions have centered around digital audio
applications, the ideas and principles in this paper can also be
successfully adopted for image, video, speech coding and other
coded communication systems. Also, much of what has been de-
scribed can in principle be generalized to include concatenated
coding systems with other types of outer block codes such as
Reed Solomon codes and other inner codes like trellis coded
modulation schemes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thanks are due to Deepen Sinha and Hui-Ling Lou for
software and stimulating technical discussions and to Gerry
Monteleone for asking penetrating questions which led to new
screening algorithms.
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Brian Chen was born in Warren, MI, and received
the B.S.E. degree from the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, in 1994, and the S.M. degree from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cam-
bridge, in 1996, both in electrical engineering. He
has submitted his doctoral thesis and will formally
receive the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
and computer science from MIT, Cambridge, in June
2000.
Since 1994 he has been with the Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT,
Cambridge, where he has held a National Defense Science and Engineering
Graduate Fellowship and has served as both a Teaching Assistant and a Research
Assistant. During 1996 and 1997, he was also with Lucent Technologies, Bell
Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, both as a Member of Technical Staff–Level 1 and
as a Consultant, developing signal design and channel coding technologies for
digital audio broadcasting. His current research interests lie in the broad areas
of communications and signal processing, with particular emphasis on informa-
tion embedding, digital watermarking, and other multimedia communications
topics. He has eleven patents pending.
He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and IEEE. He has received the
University of Michigan Regents-Alumni Scholarship, the William J. Branstrom
Freshman Prize, and the Henry Ford II Prize from the University of Michigan.
78 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 46, NO. 1, MARCH 2000

Carl-Erik W. Sundberg (S‘69–M‘75–SM‘81–F‘90)

was born in Karlskrona, Sweden on July 7, 1943. He
received the M.S.E.E. and Dr.Techn. degrees from
the Lund Institute of Technology, University of Lund,
Lund, Sweden, in 1966 and 1975, respectively.
Currently he is a Distinguished Member of
the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, Lucent
Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ. Before 1976 he
held various teaching and research positions at the
University of Lund. During 1976, he was with the
European Space Research and Technology Centre
(ESTEC), Noordwijk, The Netherlands, as an ESA Research Fellow. From
1977 to 1984 he was a Research Professor (Docent) in the Department of
Telecommunication Theory, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden. He has held
positions as Consulting Scientist at LM Ericsson, SAAB-SCANIA, Sweden,
and at Bell Laboratories, Holmdel. His consulting company, SUNCOM, has
been involved in studies of error control methods and modulation techniques
for the Swedish Defense, a number of private companies and international
organizations. His research interests include source coding, channel coding,
digital modulation methods, fault-tolerant systems, digital mobile radio
systems, spread-spectrum systems, digital satellite communications systems,
digital audio broadcasting, and optical communications. He has published over
85 journal papers and contributed over 115 conference papers. He holds over 25
US, Swedish and international patents. Several additional patents are pending.
He is coauthor of Digital Phase Modulation, (New York: Plenum, 1986), Topics
in Coding Theory, (New York: Springer-Verlag 1989) and Source-Matched
Digital Communications (New York: IEEE Press, 1996).
Dr. Sundberg has been a member of the IEEE European-African-Middle
East Committee (EAMEC) of COMSOC from 1977 to 1984. He is a member
of COMSOC Communication Theory Committee. He has also been a member
of the Technical Program Committees for the International Symposium on
Information Theory, St. Jovite, Canada, October 1983, and for the International
Conference on Communications, ICC’84, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, May
1984, for the 5th Tirrenia International Workshop on Digital Communications,
Tirrenia, Italy, September 1991 and for the International Telecommunications
Symposium, ITS’94, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 1994. He has organized and
chaired sessions at a number of international meetings. He has been a member
of the International Advisory Committee for ICCS’88, ICCS’90, ICCS’92,
ICCS’94, ICCS’96 and ICCS’98 (Singapore). He served as Guest Editor for
the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications in 1988–1989. He is
a member of SER (Svenska Elektroingenörers Riksförening) and the Swedish
URSI Committee (Svenska Nationalkommittén för Radiovetenskap). In 1986
he and his coauthor received the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society’s Paper
of the Year Award and in 1989 he and his coauthors were awarded the Marconi
Premium Proc. IEE Best Paper Award. He is a fellow of the IEEE since 1990.
He is listed in Marquis Who’s Who in America.