Mobile telephone system standards and measurement methods for acoustic noise performance

The inadequacy of existing measurement methods and standards, for determining the customer's perception of noise performance is discussed. When new products and services have been introduced, scant regard has been paid to acoustic design. The speech quality performance of mobile systems is inevitably compared with that of the fixed network, with which they must compete. The situation is exacerbated by; the complex and nonlinear parameters contained in mobile systems, such as low-rate codecs, and the hostile acoustic environment in which mobile telephony must operate. Activity in the standards forum is discussed, with particular attention paid to the need to include acoustic noise performance criteria in future standards. New measurement methods, for the assessment of nonlinear systems in noisy environments, are under development at BT Laboratories and will be included in future standards proposals.<>