Coded Speech Quality Measurement by a Non-Intrusive PESQ-DNN

Wideband codecs such as AMR-WB or EVS are widely used in (mobile) speech communication. Evaluation of coded speech quality is often performed subjectively by an absolute category rating (ACR) listening test. However, the ACR test is impractical for online monitoring of speech communication networks. Perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) is one of the widely used metrics instrumentally predicting the results of an ACR test. However, the PESQ algorithm requires an original reference signal, which is usually unavailable in network monitoring, thus limiting its applicability. NISQA is a new non-intrusive neural-network-based speech quality measure, focusing on super-wideband speech signals. In this work, however, we aim at predicting the well-known PESQ metric using a non-intrusive PESQ-DNN model. We illustrate the potential of this model by predicting the PESQ scores of wideband-coded speech obtained from AMR-WB or EVS codecs operating at different bitrates in noisy, tandeming, and error-prone transmission conditions. We compare our methods with the state-of-the-art network topologies of QualityNet, WaweNet, and DNSMOS -- all applied to PESQ prediction -- by measuring the mean absolute error (MAE) and the linear correlation coefficient (LCC). The proposed PESQ-DNN offers the best total MAE and LCC of 0.11 and 0.92, respectively, in conditions without frame loss, and still is best when including frame loss. Note that our model could be similarly used to non-intrusively predict POLQA or other (intrusive) metrics. Upon article acceptance, code will be provided at GitHub

Speech quality measurement of GSM infrastructure built on USRP N210 and OpenBTS project

The paper deals with the methodology for speech quality measuring in GSM networks using Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ). The paper brings results of practical measurement of own GSM network build on the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP N210) hardware and OpenBTS software. This OpenBTS station was installed in open terrain, and the speech quality was measured from different distances from the transmitter. The limit parameters of OpenBTS station with USRP N210 were obtained

Objective speech quality measurement for Chinese speech.

In the search for the optimisation of transmission speed and storage, speech information is often coded, or transmitted with a reduced bandwidth. As a result, quality and/or intelligibility are sometimes degraded. Speech quality is normally defined as the degree of goodness in the perception of speech while speech intelligibility is how well or clearly one can understand what is being said. In order to assess the level of acceptability of degraded speeches, various subjective methods have been developed to test codecs or sound processing systems. Although good results have been demonstrated with these, they are time consuming and expensive due to the necessary involvement of teams of professional or naive subjects1[56]. To reduce cost, computerised objective systems were created with the hope of replacing human subjects [90][43]. While reasonable standards have been reported by several of these systems, they have not reached the accuracy of well constructed subjective tests yet [92][84]. Therefore, their evaluations and improvements are constantly been researched for further breakthroughs. To date, objective speech quality measurement systems (OSQMs) have been developed mostly in Europe or the United States, and effectiveness is only tested for English, several European and Asian languages but not Chinese (Mandarin) [38][70][32]

A Speech Intelligibility Estimation Method Based on Hidden Markov Model

This paper proposes a speech intelligibility estimation method based on hidden Markov model (HMM) that is widely used for speech recognition. The HMM-based method is a kind of non-intrusive speech quality measurement, which means it operates without a reference speech signal. The log-likelihood score of HMM is converted to a normalized intelligibility score. We estimate the speech intelligibility of standard digital speech coders. The experimental results show that the proposed HMM-based method gives improved performance than the conventional non-intrusive speech intelligibility evaluation tool

Mobile Probe for Cellular Network Coverage and Quality Measurement

This article describes a proposal of the probe application used for 2G–4G mobile network coverage and speech quality measurement. It is based on Android platform, most commonly used operation system for mobile phones. Measured results are visualized in the form of a map using GPS location. There are few tests available focusing on the applications that are most often used: test of the network coverage, speed of the websites loading, data rate test and voice quality test. The results are analyzed directly in the application and are also available over the web interface form. Individual results can be exported to standard output .csv, .json and .xml formats for further analysis

VOICE INFORMATION TRANSFER QUALITY CONTROL IN A CLOUDBASED SERVICE FOR IP-TELEPHONY

This paper describes the problem of voice quality control in cloud-based VoIP-service. It is focused on current speech quality measurement methods and the way to adapt these methods to specifics of cloud-based architecture. Based on adapted methods, the speech quality control mechanism is presented.Работа поддерживается Министерством образования и науки Российской Федерации, уникальный идентификатор прикладных научных исследований RFMEFI5 7914X0009