Stochastic packet reconstruction for subjectively improved audio delivery over WLANs

Real time digital audio delivery over Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) represents an attractive, flexible and cost effective framework for realizing high-quality, multichannel home audio applications. However, the unreliable nature of WLANs IP link frequently imposes significant playback quality degradation, due to delay or permanent loss of a number of transmitted digital audio packets. In this paper, a novel packet error concealment technique is presented, based on the spectral reconstruction of the statistical equivalent of a previously successfully received audio data packet. It is shown that the proposed data reconstruction scheme outperforms previously published error concealment strategies, in both terms of objective and perceptual criteria.