Patent ID: 6931058

Claim:
Method for the transmission of a first digital signal (DS 1 ) from a first location (FL) over a transport channel (TC) to one or more second locations (SL) where it is received as a second digital signal (DS 2 ) which is substantially equal to the first digital signal (DS 1 ), whereby a sample (S 1 ) of the first digital signal (DS 1 ) represented by M bits, being the total of N most significant bits (MSB) and M-N least significant bits (LSB), is transported over the transport channel (TC) as a transport sample comprising at least two parts, of which one part is a compressed transport sample (CTS) represented by N-C bits, N being smaller than M and C being smaller than N and larger than 0, the N-C bits being obtained through predictive coding of the N most significant bits of the sample (S 1 ) of the first digital signal (DS 1 ), whereby to each sample (S 1 ) of the first digital signal (DS 1 ) corresponds at least a prediction ({circumflex over (x)} enc ) representing the predicted N most significant bits of the sample (S 1 ) of the first digital signal (DS 1 ) whereby the prediction is based on previously compressed samples, a prediction error (e enc ) representing the difference between the N most significant bits of the sample (S 1 ) of the first digital signal (DS 1 ) and said prediction ({circumflex over (x)} enc ), and a clipping error representing the difference between the prediction error (e enc ) and a clipped prediction error ((e enc ) c ) which is the prediction error (e enc ) clipped by a first clipper (PEC 1 ) to a clip range represented as [A . . B] by means of N-C bits, A and B being integers and B-A being equal to or smaller than 2 (N-C) −1, and the other part is a residual transport sample (RTS) represented by M-N bits, characterized in that said residual transport sample (RTS) is either equal to the M-N least significant bits (LSB) of said sample (S 1 ) of the first digital signal (DS 1 ) in the case that the prediction error (e enc ) corresponding to said sample (S 1 ) of the first digital signal (DS 1 ) is in the range [A . . B], or, in the other case, the P least significant bits of the M-N LSB's are equal to a substitution value (CE) which is a quantization function of the absolute clipping error corresponding to the said sample (S 1 ) of first digital signal (DS 1 ), whereby the number of output levels of said quantization function of the absolute clipping error is equal to or less than 2 P , whereby P is equal to or less than M-N and whereby the other M-N-P bits of the M-N bits of the RTS are equal to the M-N-P most significant bits of the M-N LSB's of said sample (S 1 ) of the first digital signal (DS 1 ).