Patent ID: 7194408

Claim:
A multi-codebook fixed bitrate CELP signal block encoding method, wherein a pre-determined sequence of excitation codebook identifications is known to both a CELP speech encoder and a CELP speech decoder, said method including the steps of: receiving a plurality of unencoded speech signal blocks in the CELP speech encoder; and encoding the speech signal blocks, said encoding step including: accessing the pre-determined sequence of excitation codebook identifications, said sequence of excitation codebook identifications being signal block independent; identifying, for each signal block of a plurality of signal blocks, a corresponding excitation codebook identification from said pre-determined sequence of excitation codebook identifications; and encoding each signal block by using an excitation codebook corresponding to said identified excitation codebook identification; wherein said sequence of excitation codebook identifications comprises a plurality of different excitation codebook identifications, each excitation codebook identification of said plurality of different excitation codebook identifications corresponding to one excitation codebook of a plurality of different excitation codebooks.