This work presents new improvements to CELP speech coding at low bit rates. First, a CELP algorithm is proposed in wich the complexity of the adaptive codebook search is gratly decreased. This is achieved by means of a modified model of the CELP synthesizer. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can provide speech quality comparable to one obtained with the conventional CELP codec. The rest of contributions aim to improve the quality of speech codec at low bit rates with CELP algorithm. One of them is an efficient scheme for coding the LPC spectral envelope of speech for coding the LPC spectral envelope of speech. The proposed scheme combines vector quantization and interpolation of LSF parameters, and it provides a coded spectral envelope with very good quality at 1 kb/s. Speech coded with CELP codecs frequently displays distortions in its spectral envelope that are produced by deficient excitation. This thesis proposes a new postfilter that enhances the perceptual quality of codec speech by decreasin these distortions. This work presents new improvements to CELP speech coding at low bit rates. First, a CELP algorithm is proposed in wich the complexity of the adaptive codebook search is gratly decreased. This is achieved by means of a modified model of the CELP synthesizer. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can provide speech quality comparable to one obtained with the conventional CELP codec. The rest of contributions aim to improve the quality of speech codec at low bit rates with CELP algorithm. One of them is an efficient scheme for coding the LPC spectral envelope of speech for coding the LPC spectral envelope of speech. The proposed scheme combines vector quantization and interpolation of LSF parameters, and it provides a coded spectral envelope with very good quality at 1 kb/s. Speech coded with CELP codecs frequently displays distortions in its spectral envelope that are produced by deficient excitation. This thesis proposes a new postfilter that enhances the perceptual quality of codec speech by decreasin these distortions. Voiced onsets are crucial for a good perception of speech but, at low bit rates, the conventional CELP is unable to reproduce them with good quality. This work presents a CELP algorithm into one of a set of sixteen voicing patterns. A distinct coding configuration and bit allocation are applied to each pattern. Simulation results show that the quality of speech codec with the proposed 4 kb/s CELP codec is significantly bette than the one obtained with conventional 4 kb/s CELP codec.