Paths toward HD-Voice Communication

Authors:

Geiser, B.

Book Title:

Proceedings of International Workshop on Acoustic Signal Enhancement (IWAENC)

Organization:

IWAENC

Date:

Sep. 2012

Note:

Keynote talk

Language:

English

Abstract

These days, the telecommunication world is undergoing a major technology change toward a universal, packet-based network architecture for both fixed and mobile communications. The main motivations and incentives behind this effort are presumably improved flexibility and cost-efficiency. But in particular for speech and audio communication applications, the opportunity should be seized to promote high quality services which are far superior to the long-accustomed narrowband speech telephony experience. Indeed, new audio codecs, delivering additional functionality and a much better audio quality, are deployed much quicker within such a (future) network environment.

But, as a matter of fact, very little is done to improve the audio quality for today's communication networks. Instead, "least common denominator solutions" are pursued, keeping up the status quo of narrowband speech. At first sight, this might appear reasonable from the economic and marketing perspectives. However, it is nevertheless true that subscribers of new services will still experience inferior quality if their communication partner uses an old telephone or circuit-switched network access, e.g., via GSM/UMTS speech channels or private/government subnetworks. Large parts of the worldwide telephone network are in fact based on such legacy technology and can be expected to prevail for a long time. To this end, new, more advanced methods and algorithms for "High Definition" audio transmission and reproduction are required that maintain interoperability with legacy network components.

In this contribution, current developments in packet-based HD-voice communication are summarized and a future perspective toward systems for binaural/ambient audio communication is given. Moreover, the, usually problematic, interoperability issue is addressed. Therefore, several algorithmic approaches—including embedded coding, receiver- or network-based parameter estimation, and steganographic parameter transmission—are discussed based on the practically relevant example of parametric bandwidth extension for speech and audio signals.

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