Wrap-up Session Conclusions for Session 5

The Fully Networked Car Geneva, 4-5 March 2009

InternationalTelecommunicationUnion

Wrap-up SessionConclusions for Session 5

Session 5: Voice and audiovisual services Review of the ongoing standardization activities and

technical issues and solutions to provide good (better) quality to the users

Jean-Yves MonfortITU-T FG CARCOM Vice-Chair, ETSI TC STQ ChairFrance Telecom RepresentativeJYM.C.I.S



Highlights from Presentation 5.1“Speech communication in cars goes wideband- a

new ITU-T FG CARCOM”(Hans.W. Gierlich, Head Acoustics GmbH)

Going to wideband creates new challengesDelayTo provide superior noise cancellationTo provide superior echo cancellorQuality in double talk

So, need to define criteria ensuring superior conversation performanceNeed for collaborations between standardization bodies to ensure a global quality through different networks and terminals

Reach the goal of "Tandem Free Operation" (including all speech processing systems of the communication chain)Develop/Implement protocols to avoid or at least reduce speech processing tandeming.

Anyone may join ITU-T FG CarcomNext meeting: March 6th, 2009, Geneva



Highlights from Presentation 5.2“Car Active Noise Cancellation for improved car

efficiency, From/In/To car voice communication and music listening experience” (J.P. Jallet, NXP

semiconductors)

Car Active Noise Cancellation is able to reduce the low frequency car engine and road noise without car weight increase (by comparison with passive countermeasures).Car Active Noise Cancellation brings additional benefits:

Car audio listening experience: de-masking of the music bass to restores a listening experience close to the one obtained in quiet/low noise environment.Car hands-free voice communication: additional low frequency noise reduction on top of sending path noise reduction.

Car Active Noise Cancellation can ideally be integrated with the car audio and car hands-free voice communication systems.



Highlights from Presentation 5.3“Wideband Speech Communications : The good,

The Bad and the Ugly” (Scott Pennock, QNX Software Systems)

The presentation shows the real benefits of Wideband speech in car, by comparison with Narrowband.WB may also become a key differentiator.But, to succeed it is needed to

Design fine vehicle platformsimplement high performance speech enhancement systems (AEC, NR,…)Ensure fine interoperability between narrow and wideband speech



Highlights from Presentation 5.4“Automotive speech Enhancement of Today : applications, challenges and Solutions” (Tim

Haulick, Harmann/Becker Automotive Systems GmbH)Presents several implementations to enhance speech quality perceived by the users (inside the car and distant users) in driving situations

Bandwidth extension (from NBWB)Speech reconstruction (reducing noise masking)Association of beamformer and spatial postfilter (to improve speech recognition without significant impairement of speech quality)Wind noise suppression (to reduce noise generated by fans)In-car communications (subjective tests showing the improvement perceived by users)

The enhancements are presented through spectrograms, auditory samples an results of subjective tests



Highlights from Presentation 5.5“Innovative Strategies to Improve the Delivery of

Telematics Voice Services” (Julien Masson, Connexis)

Presents a new approach for communications between drives and call centers

By combining speech recognition with human agentsBy distributed call centers with work-at-home agents

Shows consequences of this approach onThe reduction of the time requesting the driver attentionThe reduction of the cost associated to the service



Remarks

The first ITU-T Focus Group FITCAR produced a specification now approved as ITU-T as P.1100, for Handsfree terminals in narrow-band speech. The new ITU-T Focus Group CARCOM is dedicated to Wideband speech (100Hz-7 kHz). Results expected by October 2009.Moving from Narrow-band (NB) to Wideband (WB) is not only to increase the bandwidth but to ensure real better quality for the users, which include improvements in the whole communication chain including terminals.Specific enhancements are needed for car environments, but these enhancements may also be needed for other situations. So, some specifications could be re-used in standards.



Conclusions / Recommendations (1/2)

FG CARCOM is a fine place to define requirements and test methods for terminals implementing speech signal processing to be used in noisy or adverse acoustic environments (eg Noise cancellation) New Recommendation in ITU-T SG12

Some results could also be useful for other types of terminals need to disseminate results to other Standardization Bodies (eg ETSI STQ, 3GPP SA4)

The on-going work in SG16 on Voice enhancement (see session 3) will be very useful, specially for car communications to avoid/reduce speech processing tandeming and to provide relevant protocols to be used by networks and terminals.



Conclusions / Recommendations (2/2)

On-going wideband deployement but wideBand speech applications shall provide real superior speech quality, in order to satisfy users' expectations.Importance to develop standards ensuring fine interoperability between Narrowband and Wideband, without reducing significantly the speech quality in Wideband (eg implementation of bandwidth extension applications).Speech recognition. Few standards in this field; however, is there a need to develop specifications on acoustical interfaces and noise cancellation, to improve the performance of speech recognition?

Documents

Wrap-up Session Conclusions for Session 5