The envelope dynamic ratio quantizer (envelope DRQ) is an adaptive quantizer for speech signals. By utilizing the envelope of the speech, nonlinear elements, a fixed quantizer and a simple predictor, a closed-loop adaptive quantizer emerges having a high constant SNR over a wide dynamic range. The theory of the quantizer is presented, together with computer simulation results which show an improvement.compared to the one word memory APCM system. Finally, the simplicity of implementing the envelope DRQ is described.

A multidigit adaptive delta modulation (ADM) system has been proposed where the error signal, between the input and the approximated signal produced by ADM coder, is coded in an auxiliary encoder. The error in the auxiliary coder is processed by another ADM and so on. The bit rate of each of these coders isf_{r}/Nwhere fris the overall transmission rate andNis the number of coders used. The bit streams are interleaved for transmission and at the receiver they are separated and decoded, and these signals are added and filtered. It is shown that for a given transmission rate, each coder operates at a basic sampling rate of frBsuch thatN_{opt} = f_{r}/f_{rB}gives the optimum number of coders to be used for maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). A bound is derived for the maximum SNR of such a system and is compared with the bounds derived for other predictive coders. The experimental results of a two-digit ADM are presented. An average SNR of 30 dB is obtained with a dynamic range of 32 dB at fr= 32 kbits/s for band-limited noise signals. The SNR increases with the sampling rate at 15 dB/octave, as against 9 dB for a single-digit ADM. The frequency response is good and the variation of SNR with the message frequency of the delta coding system has been improved. The effect of channel errors has also been studied and the performance of the system is found satisfactory.

Two adaptive delta modulation (ADM) coders, one for A/D conversion of speech and the other for fiat spectrum signals, have been developed by incorporating a second adaptive feedback loop around the basic delta modulation (DM) coder. The dynamic range of the coder for integrated spectrum has been extended to more than 35 dB with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) > 28 dB, for a pulse-repetition frequency (PRF) of 32 kbits/s only, by using an adaptive circuit consisting of digital/analog slope detector and an FET expander. For flat spectrum signals, similar results with constant SNR over the band are obtained at a bit rate of 40 kbits/s. Thus the coders have performances equivalent to those of a 7-digit PCM, using only 32 and 40 kbits/s, respectively.