Low-Delay Error Concealment with Low Computational Overhead for Audio over IP Applications

A major problem in low-latency Audio over IP transmission is the unpredictable impact of the underlying network, leading to jitter and packet loss. Typically, error concealment strategies are employed at the receiver to counteract audible artifacts produced by missing audio data resulting from the mentioned network characteristics. Known concealment methods tend to achieve only unsatisfactory audio quality or cause high computational costs. Hence, this study aims at finding a new low-cost concealment strategy using simplest algorithms. The proposed system basically consists of an period extraction and alignment module to synthesize concealment signals from previous data. The audio quality is evaluated in form of automated measurements using PEAQ. Furthermore, the system’s complexity is analyzed by drawing the computational costs of all required modules in all operating modes and comparing its computational load versus another concealment method based on auto-regressive modeling.