Patent ID: 8340213

Claim:
A signal encoding apparatus for encoding an input time series signal, the apparatus comprising: division means for dividing the time series signal into a plurality of sub-bands to generate a low frequency sub-band signal formed by a plurality of low frequency side sub-bands and a high frequency sub-band signal formed by a plurality of high frequency side sub-bands; encoding means for encoding the low frequency sub-band signal to generate encoded data of the low frequency sub-band signal; frequency amplitude peak information generation means for generating a new high frequency sub-band signal from the low frequency sub-band signal and comparing a frequency amplitude peak of the new high frequency sub-band signal with a frequency amplitude peak of the high frequency sub-band signal to generate frequency amplitude peak information of the high frequency sub-band signal; gain information generation means for generating a new high frequency sub-band signal from the low frequency sub-band signal and comparing a gain of the new high frequency sub-band signal with a gain of the high frequency sub-band signal to generate gain information of the high frequency sub-band signal; and output means for multiplexing the encoded data of the low frequency sub-band signal, the frequency amplitude peak information of the high frequency sub-band signal and the gain information of the high frequency sub-band signal and outputting compressed data, wherein, the frequency amplitude peak information generation means normalizes the maximum value of the frequency amplitude of the new high frequency sub-band signal according to the ratio of the gain of the new high frequency sub-band signal and that of the high frequency sub-band signal and generates the frequency amplitude peak information of the high frequency sub-band signal as the ratio of the normalized maximum value of the new high frequency sub-band signal to the maximum value of the frequency amplitude of the high frequency sub-band signal, the gain information generation means generates the gain information of the high frequency sub-band signal as the ratio of the gain of the new high frequency sub-band signal to the gain of the high frequency sub-band signal, the frequency amplitude peak information generation means changes the quantization bit length of the frequency amplitude peak information of the high frequency sub-band signal as a function of the power level of each sub-band signal the frequency amplitude peak information generation means makes the quantization bit length of the frequency amplitude peak information of the high frequency sub-band signal shorter toward high frequencies from low frequencies, and the frequency amplitude peak information generation means uses the common frequency amplitude peak information of the high frequency sub-band signal for a plurality of sub-bands.