Question 9/12

Motivation

The work of this Question will focus on objective methods for evaluating quality parameters in telecommunication scenarios. Primarily, the methods under study should concentrate on user-perceived quality characteristics. Consequently, these methods and algorithms include perceptual approaches. They model results and procedures, which are applicable in subjective tests. So that subjective procedures will get an objective counterpart by using same scaling and basic procedures.

Question

Study items to be considered include, but are not limited to:

• P.863 will be supplemented by a User's Guide to P.863 that gives information for practical use of P.863 and results to be expected.
• An already defined work item in the previous study period is the objective assessment of talking quality. Therefore at first a reliable subjective test method has to be established. In a second step, an objective model can be developed.
• In addition to the existing objective models like P.862 or P.563 that are producing single numbers describing the overall quality; a need for additional information about possible quality degradations and quality dimensions are requested by the market. This is studied under P.AMD but has also to be studied in no-reference single ended approaches such as P.563 or P.SPELQ.
• Furthermore, the objective assessment of audio signals such as music transmitted over telecommunication links like cell networks or VoIP should be investigated.
• The objective rating of the annoyance of noise and residual noise – especially by processing by VQE's – in voice communications has to be investigated. Here a close relationship to the recently approved subjective method P.835 is given. A study item P.ONRA is already launched in this Question.
• The determination of the quality of synthesised speech in an instrumental way, e.g. using the objective perceptual methods, is an interesting topic in this Question.
•  In addition to the voice related topics a request for evaluating of objective video assessment models was registered. This topic should be restricted to typical video applications in telecommunication services. That requires a restriction to low bit rate video coding as well as limited image sizes like used in mobile phones and PDA's. Here a close partnership to VQEG is established.
• This Question analyses and recommends methods, metrics and procedures for statistical evaluation, qualification and comparison of objective quality prediction models. These statistics can be applied to objective prediction models which can be translated to an estimated subjective judgment of a dedicated subjective test procedure. This Question discusses frameworks, metrics and example procedures for those statistical analyses and reporting.
• Considerations on how to help measure and mitigate climate change.

Tasks

Tasks include, but are not limited to:

• Maintenance and enhancement of P-series Recommendations with regards to objective quality testing methods and perceptual models.
• It is anticipated that new Recommendations on objective evaluation of:
• User's Guide to P.863
• Objective evaluation of Noise Reduction Systems (P.ONRA)
• Objective estimation of individual quality dimensions (P.AMD)
•  Objective prediction models for speech intelligibility (P.OSI)
•  A new no-reference model for listening quality prediction in mid-pint and end-point applications (P.SPELQ)
• Objective prediction of Talking Quality
• Annoyance models for noise in voice communications
• Non-Speech signals in voice-band telecommunication scenarios (e.g. music)  can be produced in the 2013-2016 study period.

Relationships

Recommendations

• P-series, G.100- and G.1000-series

• 3/12, 4/12, 6/12, 7/12, 11/12, 14/12, 15/12, 16/12

• ITU-T SG 9, SG 16

• VQEG, ETSI TC STQ, ETSI 3GPP