In this paper, we propose a new excitation enhancement technique to improve the speech quality of low bit-rate code-excited linear prediction (CELP) coders. The proposed technique is based on a harmonic model and it is employed only in the decoding process of speech coders without any additional bits. We develop the procedure of harmonic model parameter estimation and harmonic generation, and apply this technique to a current state-of-the-art low bit rate speech coder, ITU-T G.729 Annex D. Also, its performance is measured by using the ITU-T P.862 PESQ score and compared to those of the phase dispersion filter and the long-term postfilter applied to the decoded excitation. It is shown that the proposed excitation enhancement technique can improve the quality of decoded speech and provide better quality for male speech than other techniques.