METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COMPRESSING AND DECOMPRESSING A VOICE MESSAGE IN A VOICE MESSAGING SYSTEM

A processing system (210) subdivides (302) a voice message into a plurality of portions, and estimates (304) a plurality of preferred pitch periods corresponding to the plurality of portions. The processing system calculates (314) a plurality of segment sizes corresponding to the plurality of preferred pitch periods, and compresses (316) each of the plurality of portions by utilizing a corresponding one of the plurality of segment sizes in a speech compression algorithm, thereby generating a compressed message. The processing system determines (326) from the plurality of segment sizes a preferred segment size for decompressing the compressed message; and sends (328) the preferred segment size, along with the compressed message, to a receiver (122) for use in decompressing the compressed message in a speech decompression algorithm.