Huawei and China Mobile jointly promote 4G EVS speech codec, leading mobile to a Full HD Voice future
[Shanghai, China, September 24, 2015] Huawei and China Mobile jointly demonstrated the next generation Full HD (High Definition) Voice codec standard, Enhanced Voice Services (EVS), operating over a 4G mobile network, at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Shanghai. The demonstration allowed listeners to experience real-time EVS voice calls; clearly showing how the speech intelligibility of mobile phones using the EVS standard can achieve Full HD Voice quality which perfectly matches with high definition video as experienced at the movies. It’s just as if you are speaking face to face.
Currently, most voice communications are still limited to traditional narrow band speech. Speech intelligibility and the sense of presence are lost in this experience. For 2G/3G wireless communications, in particular, there are still interruptions, distortions in the speech and long delays. We are all familiar with the “Hello…hello? Is anybody there?” exchanges that occur regularly in 2G/3G voice communication, but improvements in speech coding technologies over the last twenty years, culminating in the development of the EVS codec, can and will transform the quality of voice communication services. This is good news for operators who are increasingly recognizing that improvements in the user experience for voice communications, through HD or even Full HD Voice solutions, are becoming more and more critical for them.
Currently, leading operators are deploying AMR-WB (Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband, 7 kHz audio bandwidth) in conjunction with VoLTE, as recommended by The GSMA (Groupe Speciale Mobile Association), to improve their voice quality to HD Voice. To further enhance voice calls, replicating face to face communications, even wider audio bandwidths are necessary and to achieve these qualities 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) has standardized the EVS codec for 4G mobile voice communications. With the EVS codec, the audio bandwidth is extended to super wideband 16 kHz and even to full band 20 kHz, more than doubling the bandwidth of HD Voice and AMR-WB. The reconstructed voice is clearer, closer to the original sound, and provides better presence. Furthermore, with the outstanding anti-jitter and packet loss concealment ability of EVS, better voice quality can be guaranteed even when the user is at the cell edge. Even when moving rapidly and with slightly different configurations, the cell capacity can be improved 100% or more with equivalent voice quality using EVS.
“4G mobile communications can deliver greater capacity, shorter latency, and together with the introduction of EVS Full HD Voice, will lead to a brand-new voice user experience that will popularize these new generation networks,” said TIAN WANG, Director of The Huawei Media Lab. As one of the important contributors to the EVS standard, Huawei will work together with operators to promote large-scale commercial deployments of the EVS codec, and will drive for more and more terminal products supporting EVS which will speed up the arrival of the era of Full HD Voice.
The EVS codec standard proposal was jointly submitted to 3GPP in August 2014 by Huawei and 11 other companies in the fields of speech coding and communications. The EVS standard was officially approved by 3GPP in September 2014. As the main contributor to the EVS standard, The Media lab of Huawei’s Central Research Institute is committed to research at the frontiers of multimedia technology, to the promotion of international audio and video standards, and to the building of an open ecosystem together with other enterprises, colleges and universities.
