Assessment and Prediction of Speech Quality in Telecommunications

The quality of a telecommunication voice service is largely inftuenced by the quality of the transmission system. A reduced set of these quality elements forms a basis for models which aim at predicting mouth-to-ear quality as it would be perceived by a user of the sys­ tem. The quality of telecommunication voice services has become an important issue due to the evolving and liberalized market. With the advent of new technologies, however, a diversification takes place which makes it necessary to carefully plan and observe network quality. Speech communication quality - as it is perceived by the user or customer of a service - carries a multidimensional nature, a fact which must be reflected in its assessment and prediction with quality models. In this book a new schematic is developed which classifies different entities contributing to the quality of a service. It takes into account conversational user as well as service-related contributions. Starting from this concept, perceptively relevant constituents of speech communication quality are identified. A simulation model is developed and implemented, based on physical elements of the transmission configuration. It allows the perceptively most relevant parameters to be simulated, in real time and for the conversation situation. The book gives an overview on assessment needed for reliably measuring the different quality dimensions.