Wideband Speech Communication- The Quality Parameters as Perceived by the User

Wideband speech transmission is one of the technologies discussed for use in wireless systems and VoIP scenarios to provide a quality dimension significantly different from today’s narrowband communication systems. While the problem of wideband speech coding is mostly solved the requirements for a wideband speech service are still under discussion. 3G mobile networks and VoIP networks both allow the transmission of wideband speech. In order to take advantage of the high quality networks appropriate services and terminal solutions are required. The paper gives an overview about the requirements in wideband communication systems. The parameters influencing the speech quality and the acoustical user interface and its influence on the perceived speech sound quality are introduced. Besides the speech sound quality and its perception by the user the requirements for a wideband speech service with respect to other performance parameters relevant for a communication service are discussed: performance of the (terminal) equipment under background noise conditions, echo cancelling characteristics, double talk capability and others.