Selectable Mode Vocoder (SMV) is variable bitrate

Variable bitrate

Variable bitrate is a term used in telecommunications and computing that relates to the bitrate used in sound or video encoding. As opposed to constant bitrate , VBR files vary the amount of output data per time segment...

 speech coding

Speech coding

Speech coding is the application of data compression of digital audio signals containing speech. Speech coding uses speech-specific parameter estimation using audio signal processing techniques to model the speech signal, combined with generic data compression algorithms to represent the resulting...

 standard used in CDMA2000

CDMA2000

CDMA2000 is a family of 3G mobile technology standards, which use CDMA channel access, to send voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. The set of standards includes: CDMA2000 1X, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. 0, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. A, and CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. B...

 networks. SMV provides multiple modes of operation that are selected based on input speech characteristics.

The SMV for Wideband

Wideband

In communications, wideband is a relative term used to describe a wide range of frequencies in a spectrum. A system is typically described as wideband if the message bandwidth significantly exceeds the channel's coherence bandwidth....

 CDMA

Code division multiple access

Code division multiple access is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. It should not be confused with the mobile phone standards called cdmaOne, CDMA2000 and WCDMA , which are often referred to as simply CDMA, and use CDMA as an underlying channel access...

 is based on 4 codecs: full rate at 8.5 kbit/s, half rate at 4 kbit/s, quarter rate at 2 kbit/s, and eighth rate at 800 bit/s. The full rate and half rate are based on the CELP

Code Excited Linear Prediction

Code-excited linear prediction is a speech coding algorithm originally proposed by M.R. Schroeder and B.S. Atal in 1985. At the time, it provided significantly better quality than existing low bit-rate algorithms, such as residual-excited linear prediction and linear predictive coding vocoders...

 algorithm

Algorithm

In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...

 that is based on a combined closed-loop-open-loop-analysis (COLA). In SMV the signal frames are first classified as:

• Silence/Background noise
• Non-stationary unvoiced
• Stationary unvoiced
• Onset
• Non-stationary voiced
• Stationary voiced

The algorithm includes voice activity detection

Voice activity detection

Voice activity detection , also known as speech activity detection or speech detection, is a technique used in speech processing in which the presence or absence of human speech is detected.. The main uses of VAD are in speech coding and speech recognition...

 (VAD) followed by an elaborate frame

Frame (artificial intelligence)

Frames were proposed by Marvin Minsky in his 1974 article "A Framework for Representing Knowledge." A frame is an artificial intelligence data structure used to divide knowledge into substructures by representing "stereotyped situations." Frames are connected together to form a complete idea.Frames...

 classification scheme. Silence/background noise and stationary unvoiced frames are represented by spectrum

Frequency spectrum

The frequency spectrum of a time-domain signal is a representation of that signal in the frequency domain. The frequency spectrum can be generated via a Fourier transform of the signal, and the resulting values are usually presented as amplitude and phase, both plotted versus frequency.Any signal...

-modulated noise and coded at 1/4 or 1/8 rate. The SMV uses 4 subframes for full rate and two/three subframes for half rate. The stochastic (fixed) codebook structure is also elaborate and uses sub-codebooks each tuned for a particular type of speech. The sub-codebooks have different degrees of pulse sparseness (more sparse for noise like excitation). SMV scores a high of 3.6 MOS

Mean Opinion Score

The Mean Opinion Score test has been used for decades in telephony networks to obtain the human user's view of the quality of the network. In multimedia especially when codecs are used to compress the bandwidth requirement , the mean opinion score ...

 at full rate with clean speech.

The coder works on a frame of 160 speech samples (20 ms) and requires a look ahead of 80 samples (10 ms) if noise-suppression option B is used. An additional 24 samples of look ahead is required if noise-suppression option A is used. So the algorithmic delay for the coder is 30 ms with noise-suppression option B and 33 ms with noise-suppression option A.

The next evolution of CDMA speech codecs is VMR-WB

VMR-WB

Variable-Rate Multimode Wideband is a source-controlled variable-rate multimode codec designed for robust encoding/decoding of wideband/narrowband speech. The operation of VMR-WB is controlled by speech signal characteristics and by traffic condition of the network...

 which provides much higher speech quality with wideband

Wideband

In communications, wideband is a relative term used to describe a wide range of frequencies in a spectrum. A system is typically described as wideband if the message bandwidth significantly exceeds the channel's coherence bandwidth....

 while fitting to the same networks.

SMV can be also used in 3GPP2 container file format - 3G2

3GP

3GP is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones....

.

External links

• RFC 3558 - RTP Payload Format for Enhanced Variable Rate Codecs (EVRC) and Selectable Mode Vocoders (SMV)