Method and apparatus for generating channel error flags for error mitigation and/or concealment in source decoders

摘要

Error flags are generated for use in source decoding of a source-coded bit stream transmitted through a channel of a communication system. The source-coded bit stream is channel coded using at least one channel code, and the channel code is decoded in a soft-decision channel decoder to generate a received version of the source-coded bit stream and one or more reliability measures associated with a designated portion of the received version of the source-coded bit stream. The reliability measures are processed to generate one or more error flags indicative of the presence of an error in the corresponding portion of the received version of the source-coded bit stream. The invention allows different detection capabilities to be used for different portions of the received version of the source-coded bit stream, and further allows these detection capabilities to be changed dynamically at the receiver. The error flags may be used to trigger an error mitigation/concealment algorithm in the source decoder. Advantageously, the error flags can be matched to frames or subframes of the source-coded bit stream, such that the performance of the error mitigation/concealment algorithm is substantially improved relative to its performance when using error flags generated from a conventional outer block code.