access icon free Performance improvement of a non-intrusive voice quality metric in lossy networks

© The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Received 01/04/2018, Accepted 20/08/2019, Revised 25/06/2019, Published 22/08/2019

Voice quality assessment of phone calls is a relevant task for mobile service providers. In this context, the main objective of this research is to provide a model that improves the performance of ITU-T Rec. P.563. To accomplish this objective, the proposed model considers two aspects, better response in lossy network and adequate treatment of silences segments into the audio signal. Thus, a function is determined to suppress silences in the speech signal according to the packet loss rate value. Furthermore, the proposed model is implemented on both a voice quality server and a mobile device. Experimental results show that P.563 algorithm performance was really improved by the proposed model, approximating its results to those given by P.862 algorithm, reaching a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.9957 and a root mean square error of 0.2983. Moreover, subjective test results demonstrated that the proposed model results overcome those obtained by the P.563 algorithm.

Inspec keywords: speech processing; mobile handsets; mean square error methods; correlation theory

Other keywords: mobile device; root mean square error; Pearson correlation coefficient; lossy network; audio signal; speech signal; mobile service providers; P.563 algorithm performance; ITU-T Rec. P.563 algorithm; nonintrusive voice quality metric assessment; phone calls; voice quality server; packet loss rate value

Subjects: Speech and audio signal processing; Speech processing techniques; Interpolation and function approximation (numerical analysis); Interpolation and function approximation (numerical analysis); Mobile radio systems

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