Bandwidth-Scalable Stereo Audio Coding Based on a Layered Structure

In this paper, we propose a bandwidth-scalable stereo audio coding method based on a layered structure. The proposed stereo coding method encodes super-wideband (SWB) stereo signals and is able to decode either wideband (WB) stereo signals or SWB stereo signals, depending on the network congestion. The performance of the proposed stereo coding method is then compared with that of a conventional stereo coding method that separately decodes WB or SWB stereo signals, in terms of subjective quality, algorithmic delay, and computational complexity. Experimental results show that when stereo audio signals sampled at a rate of 32kHz are compressed to 64kbit/s, the proposed method provides significantly better audio quality with a 64-sample shorter algorithmic delay, and comparable computational complexity.