TM9100 Service Manual Description 55
© Tait Electronics Limited August 2005
2.6.1 Audio Processing and Signaling
Microphone Input The input to the transmitter path begins at the microphone input. There are 
two microphone sources: a fist microphone connected to the control head 
and an auxiliary microphone connected via the auxiliary or external options 
connector. Only electret-type microphones are supported. Support for 
optional dynamic fist microphones is facilitated by a hardware amplifier and 
filter in the control head, and must be activated in the programming 
software.
Analog Processing 
of the Microphone 
Input
The CODEC (AD6521) performs microphone selection and amplification. 
The microphone amplifier consists of a fixed gain amplifier of 16dB 
followed by a programmable-gain amplifier with 0 to 22dB gain. 
The amplified microphone signal is converted to a digital stream by a 16-bit 
ADC with integral anti-alias filtering (0.1 to 3.2kHz). The digital stream is 
transported to the DSP for further audio processing.
Automatic Level 
Control
The ALC follows and is used to effectively increase dynamic range by 
boosting the gain of the microphone pre-amplifier under quiet conditions 
and reducing the gain under noisy acoustic conditions. The ALC function 
resides in the DSP and controls the microphone-programmable gain 
amplifier in the CODEC. The ALC has a fast-attack (about 10ms) and 
slow-decay (up to 2s) gain characteristic. This characteristic ensures that the 
peak signal level is regulated near full scale to maximize dynamic range.
DSP Audio 
Processing 
(Analog Mode)
The output of the automatic level control provides the input to the DSP 
audio processing chain at a sample rate of 8kHz. Optional processing such 
as encryption or companding is done first if applicable. Pre-emphasis, if 
required, is then applied. The pre-emphasized signal is hard limited to 
prevent overdeviation and filtered to remove high frequency components. 
The sample rate is then interpolated up to 48kHz and scaled to be suitable 
for the frequency synthesizer.
Data and Signaling 
Encoders 
(Analog Mode)
The data and signaling encoders inject their signals into various points 
within the audio processing chain. The injection point depends on the 
encoders bandwidth and whether pre-emphasis is required.
Tx Vocoder
(Digital Mode)
The IMBE vocoder block takes audio samples in blocks of 20ms, analyses 
them and compresses them down to 88 bits. If there is no speech content in 
the segment, the vocoder produces silence. If speech is detected in the 
segment, the content of the segment is split into a variable number of 
frequency bands (max. 12) and a voiced/unvoiced decision is made for each 
band. It also estimates the pitch of the segment of speech and determines the 
spectral amplitudes of the voiced frequency bands.