6. The method of claim 1 wherein the voice data encoded in the data streams is encoded in accordance with mixed excitation linear prediction (MELP), such that speech coding parameters include gain, pitch, unvoiced flag, jitter, bandpass voicing and a line spectral frequency (LSF) vector.
1. A method for decoding data streams in a voice communication system, comprising: receiving two or more data streams having voice data encoded therein, where each data stream is received over a different channel in the voice communication system; decoding each data stream into a set of speech coding parameters, each set of speech coding parameters having different types of parameters and parameters were derived from a parametric model of a vocal tract; determining a weighting metric for each channel over which speech coding parameters were received, where the weighting metric is derived from an energy value at which a given data stream was received; normalizing the weighting metric for each channel to a linear scale; weighting speech coding parameters by the normalized weighting metric for the channel over which the speech coding parameter was received; combining weighted speech coding parameters to form a set of combined speech coding parameters, where speech coding parameters of a given type are combined with speech coding parameters of the same type; and inputting the set of combined speech coding parameters into a speech synthesizer.