Speech Processing Pioneer Bishnu Saroop Atal Dies at 93

Bishnu Saroop AtalAcoustics and signal processing pioneerLife Fellow, 93; died 19 AugustAtal was an acoustics and signal processing researcher at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., and later at AT&T’s Shannon Laboratory, in Florham Park, N.J. His pioneering work on voice-coding techniques became the foundation for efficient, high-quality voice transmission over cellular networks. He received the 2013 IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal for “fundamental and pioneering contributions to speech coding.”He joined Bell Labs in 1961 as a communications researcher, and his early work there focused on speaker identification technology. During the 1960s he helped develop linear predictive coding, a powerful method for analyzing and compressing speech. LPC is now the most widely used method for encoding speech at a low bit rate.Atal developed increasingly sophisticated low-bit-rate speech-coding techniques. They included multipulse LPC, which improved the quality of compressed speech.