Vector Quantization in Speech Processing Explanation

Answer 1

The second question (compare codebook to given signal) is more easy: for each codebook entry V_k_j you must calculate distance d with input signal. The 'j' with smallest distance 'd' will corespond to best fitted codebook entry. As a distance function you can use WLR

Building codebook (trainig) is bit more complicated. You must divide you sentences to vectors with lenght N (16) and then use some clustering algorithm (like k-means) to cluster these vectors. Then find mean in every cluster. This mean and will be codebook entry. It is a fisrt thing that comes to mind.

Another algorithm (I believe, it will be better) can be found here. Also, two simple training algorithms are described in Wikipedia