Digital audio broadcasting: optimizing of a combined concept of source and channel coding with respect to subjective criteria

In the case of digital audio broadcasting for mobile receivers, a particularly hostile transmission path has to be considered, and the principles of modulation and channel coding have to be selected carefully with respect to the characteristics of the transmission path, and with respect to the desired behaviour of degradation. In this paper the authors propose a channel coding scheme on the basis of convolutional codes, to be used in the so-called `Masking pattern Adapted Subband Coding And Multiplexing´ (MASCAM) system. This system has been designed for bit-efficient transmission of high-quality audio signals and is based on masking effects of the human ear