This paper presents an analysis of the performance of a digital speech interpolation (DSI) system as a function of the traffic offered to the system. We assume that the DSI overload degradation occurs as clipping or freezeout. This is identical to TASI freezeout. Unlike conventional analysis, which assumes all of the trunks entering the DSI system are busy all the time, we calculate the freezeout fraction as a function of the traffic offered. In almost all practical situations the freezeout fraction, computed based on traffic assumptions, is considerably less than that computed assuming all trunks are busy. When a DSI system is used to compressNtrunks down intocchannels, there is always a tradeoff between the blocking probability in the trunk group and the degradation introduced by the DSI system. This tradeoff depends on the traffic offered and is explored in this paper.

A theoretical method of evaluating degradations of variable rate coders in a multichannel digital speech interpolation (DSI) system is developed. Each of the coder outputs has a variable rate based on the algorithm. The DSI system multiplexes the outputs of these variable rate coders into a fixed bit rate channel. During periods of high activity all active users are served, but at a reduced rate depending on the demand. The degradation due to high activity is shared by all active users. This system avoids speech clipping and "freeze-out" distortion. Theoretical expressions of the system overload probability and the probability of degradation to a particular user in the DSI system are derived. Two types of variable rate coders, namely, a constant quality subband coder and a constant noise subband coder, are chosen and used as examples. Comparisons of the degradations are made between the theoretical results and computer simulated results for the two types of variable rate coders, and close agreement is observed. The theory is applicable to other variable rate coding algorithms as well. In this study, all of the simulations are made at 40 percent speech activity and the average rate of the variable rate coders is close to 16 kbits/s. Objective quality measures indicate that in a system with a trunk size larger than 40, the variable rate coder DSI system can achieve a 2:1 compression with a degradation of less than 1 dB compared to non-DSI variable rate coders. This corresponds to a total gain of 8:1 when compared to 64 kbit/s PCM.