Patent ID: 7671766

Claim:
A method for processing a signal, the method comprising: extracting, by an audio coding apparatus, first identification information which indicates whether a differential coding scheme is to be used, without extracting second identification information which indicates whether a pilot based coding scheme is to be used; when the first identification information indicates that the differential coding scheme is to be used, decoding data elements of a current group included in a current frame with the differential coding scheme; when the first identification information indicates that the differential coding scheme is not to be used, extracting the second identification indication which indicates whether the pilot based coding scheme is to be used; when the second identification information indicates that the pilot based coding scheme is to be used, decoding the data elements of the current group included in the current frame with the pilot based coding scheme, using a pilot reference value and one or more pilot difference values; and reconstructing an audio signal using the data elements of the current group, wherein: the pilot reference value is dependent on each of the data elements of the current group, and is not dependent on the data elements of the other frame, a quantity of the pilot difference values is equal to a quantity of the data elements of the current group, the pilot reference value is a single value which applies to all of the data elements of the current group, and each pilot difference value corresponds to each data element of the current group.