SwissQual...

Diversity
NiNA+ Voice Test Result Description
Manual

Manual

Test & Measurement

NiNA+ Voice Test Result Description 01

The firmware of the instrument makes use of several valuable open source software packages. For information, see the "Open
Source Acknowledgement" on the user documentation CD-ROM (included in delivery).
Rohde & Schwarz would like to thank the open source community for their valuable contribution to embedded computing.

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Contents

Contents
1 Introduction............................................................................................ 5
2 Listening Quality.................................................................................... 6
2.1

Definition of Listening Quality..................................................................................... 6

2.2

Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment.......................................................... 7

2.3

Assessment of Intrusive-/Non-Intrusive Calls............................................................9

2.3.1

Intrusive and Double-Ended Speech Quality Assessment..............................................9

2.3.2

Non-intrusive and Single-Ended Speech Quality Assessment....................................... 9

3 NiNA+ Network Quality Assessment..................................................11

3.1

Technical Background of NiNA+............................................................................... 11

3.2

Technical Requirements and Performance.............................................................. 12

3.3

NiNA+ Measurement Results..................................................................................... 15

3.3.1

Analyzing Envelope of Received Signal........................................................................19

Manual NiNA+ Voice Test Result Description 01

SwissQual... Diversity

Manual NiNA+ Voice Test Result Description 01

Contents

SwissQual... Diversity

Introduction

1 Introduction
This document describes the technical background, the application scenarios as well
as the parameters that are measured with the single ended NiNA+ voice quality measurement. The application used was the SwissQual QoS Measurement System.
NiNA+ provides an opportunity for assessing the signal quality of a signal transmitted
via a telecommunications network without the knowledge of the originally transmitted
signal. The speech quality is determined by only using the output signal. SwissQuals
NiNA+ solution can be applied for rating of any arbitrary connection where a selfanswering far-end side is playing back human speech, for example, weather forecast
or similar. Since, NiNA+ can be applied on the mobile unit, the radio link forms part of
the tested connection. Of course, by using NiNA+ any fixed line connection, even
Voice over IP, can be rated.
Furthermore, the NiNA+ method is not restricted to end-to-end measurements; it can
be used at any arbitrary location in the transmission chain. It can be used for quality
monitoring at any electrical measuring point within a real established voice link, for
example, in a VoIP Gateway or a at an E1/T1 interface. The calculated score reflects
the true speech quality from the perspective of the end-user as if using a conventional
shaped handset at this measuring point.

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Listening Quality
Definition of Listening Quality

2 Listening Quality
For network operators or equipment manufacturers, it is important to know where and
why there is speech quality degradation. Since listening quality is a major factor determining customer satisfaction, encoding techniques must be designed for optimal
speech quality. In order to assess the quality of speech encoding techniques, largescale auditory tests are commonly employed. However, it is very difficult to reproduce
results obtained in such a way. Furthermore, such results are depending on the level of
motivation of the individual test candidates. It is, therefore, a big advantage to have an
automated method capable of physically measuring speech quality parameters and
producing results, which correlates as closely as possible with subjectively acquired
results.
Listening quality is a vague term compared with bit rate, echo or loudness. Since customer satisfaction can be measured directly by the quality of the transmitted speech,
encoding techniques must be selected and optimized based on their listening quality.

2.1 Definition of Listening Quality

Listening Quality is defined as a measure of a listeners satisfaction based on his experience and expectation regarding voice communication. It is generally expressed as a
Mean Opinion Score (MOS). The Listening Quality is usually measured by applying
Absolute Category Rating Tests (ACR), which shows the MOS on a scale from 1 (bad)
to 5 (excellent).
This measurement denotes the average of many individual opinions on speech quality,
which are obtained from a representative number of listeners. Listening quality is a
complex psycho-acoustic phenomenon within the process of human perception. As
such, it is a subjective measurement.
Listening Quality is the main factor for a perceived overall quality in speech telecommunications. However, as listed below, Listening Quality is only one of three dimensions determining the overall speech quality of a telephone call:

Listening Quality: covers the listening situation between the two calling parties,
where one party is talking and the other party is listening (non active)

Talking Quality: perceived quality by the talker during own speech activity (mainly
influenced by echoes and side tones)

Conversational Quality: perceived overall quality in a human conversation. It

combines Listening and Talking Quality together with signal delay and double talk
interferences.

Detailed definitions of these dimensions and test scenarios for auditory tests can be
found in ITU-T P.800 series.

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Listening Quality
Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment

2.2 Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment

Assessing the quality of a telecommunication network is an important instrument for
achieving and maintaining the required service quality. One method of assessing the
service quality of a telecommunications network involves determining the quality of a
signal transmitted via the telecommunications network. Therefore a test connection
has to be established and a signal will be transmitted from A to B. In the case of audio
signals and in particular voice signals, several of these so-called intrusive or double
ended procedures are used for this purpose. As the name suggests, such procedures
intervene in the system to be tested in such a way that a transmission channel is allocated and a reference signal is transmitted along it.
The transmitted speech signal can be collected and assessed in 2 ways:

Subjective assessment: This is where test persons conduct subjective auditory

tests, either comparing the received signal with the known reference signal or
rate the received signal by their own experience and expectation This procedure
is, however, very time consuming and therefore expensive.

Objective assessment: An automated speech quality assessment method making:

Evaluation and rating of the received signal compared to the known reference
(double-ended method and intrusive, requires a testcall)

Evaluation and rating is conducted on the received signal alone. (singleended method, might be a test call to a answering machine or even live monitoring)

The basic relationship between subjective /objective assessments and double-ended/

single-ended is shown in .

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Listening Quality
Subjective and Objective Quality Assessment

Send signal

Receive signal

Network under test

Reference speech signal

Transmitted speech signal

Experience
Expectation
Semantic

Human listener

Methods that require

a reference signal
(double-ended

Quality rating

Methods that do not

require a
reference signal
(single-ended)

Quality rating

Fig. 2-1: Subjective versus objective quality assessment

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Listening Quality
Assessment of Intrusive-/Non-Intrusive Calls

2.3 Assessment of Intrusive-/Non-Intrusive Calls

With reference to objective speech quality testing, the Intrusive and Non-intrusive
methods can be used in several application scenarios. Namely, the test options are as
follows:

Intrusive and double-ended: Both ends of the connection are under control and a
defined audio signal will be transmitted in this test connection.

Non-intrusive In-service Monitoring: Assessment of speech signals in real

human conversation by parallel monitoring (e.g. at E1/T1 interface or VoIP-Gateway)

Intrusive and single-ended: A test connection will be established to any answering station which is playing back a voice signal, for example, a weather forecast.
Here the same model is applied as the Non-intrusive In-service Monitoring.

2.3.1 Intrusive and Double-Ended Speech Quality Assessment

Here the methods, which require a known reference signal, will be applied normally.
Both ends of the connection are under control and a pre-defined voice-signal will be
transmitted.
This approach generally has the disadvantage that, it is necessary to intervene in the
network to be tested. This means, to determine the signal quality, at least one transmission channel must be occupied for the reference signal to be transmitted on it. This
transmission channel cannot be used for data transfer purposes during this period of
time. In addition, although in a broadcasting system such as a radio service, for example, it is in principle possible to assign the signal source for transmitting test signals,
however, since all channels are consequently occupied and the test signal would be
transmitted to all receivers, this procedure is extremely impractical. Also, Intrusive procedures are likewise unsuitable for the purpose of simultaneously monitoring the quality of a large number of transmission channels.
Of course, the advantages of the double ended method, is that the input signal or reference signal is known, this allows for very accurate and detailed analysis of voice
quality impairments. Each change in the signal during its transmission can be detected
and be proven for its impact on perceived quality by applying psycho-acoustic models.
Such models are well applicable for optimization processes in laboratories as well as in
real networks. They are able to predict even the minimal degradations of the signals
and can be applied to compare different or similar transmission scenarios.

2.3.2 Non-intrusive and Single-Ended Speech Quality Assessment

Models assessing speech quality without a pre-defined reference speech signal, which
has to be transmitted, often called non-intrusive or single-ended models. These models analyze the transmitted and maybe distorted speech without any possibility to compare it with a separate input or known reference signal. Therefore, no reference input
signal is available for a detailed comparison.

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Listening Quality
Assessment of Intrusive-/Non-Intrusive Calls

The single ended models often look for pre-defined distortions by applying conventional signal analysis methods. This means, they are looking for background noises,
interruptions, frame repeats and so on. More advanced solutions try to reconstruct a
reference speech signal from the distorted one and apply similar psycho-acoustic
based methods for comparisons like the intrusive and double-ended methods.
Of course, the accuracy of a single ended approach is lower than that of an intrusive
and double ended approach. However, due to the advanced integrated speech extraction and the psycho-acoustic based calculations, the single-ended approach is now
accurate enough to be applied in real environments.
A non-intrusive, single-ended algorithm has two base applications, namely:

In-Service Monitoring: Here the speech signal of a real conversation will be

assessed.
This can be done with a terminal or maybe more efficient at the PBX side at an
E1/T1 link or even in a VoIP Gateway.
The advantages are two-fold:
Ability to collect a large amount of measurement data without allocating network resources

Gain a more realistic overview about the speech quality as perceived by the
subscribers
This is because the impact to speech quality coming from the sending side, for
example, Background noise, is included in the measurement and end result.

NiNA+ will be connected at an electrical interface, therefore the real acoustical

environment of the listener cannot be measured, instead a modeled handset is
applied to the signal to act as an intermediate receiving function.
Applications for such quality monitoring scenarios except the pure quality reporting
could be also quality-based routing or quality based billing.
For the network operator the quality monitoring scenario can be used as a powerful
quality reporting tool application, however further applications are possible like
quality-based routing or quality based billing.

Intrusive and single-ended Quality: Here a test connection has to be established

at both ends but it is not required that the far-end side plays back a pre-defined
signal.
This is an advantage as there is no need to install a dedicated answering station.
The model works with any speech signal from the far-end, these could be public
numbers like the weather forecast or the time service. This is really helpful for monitoring multi-link connections especially to other providers or other countries. Only
at the listening side a test system has to be installed. Furthermore, the network
provider will have the possibility to monitor there own voice-based announcement
services for possible impacts or accessibility.
NiNA+ is SwissQuals solution for smart predicting MOS-LQO on a single ended
approach. It covers a signal pre-processing and calculates additional parameters
such as causes of quality degradations, noise and speech levels. NiNA+ as standalone solution is a complete suite for non-intrusive listening quality assessment.

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NiNA+ Network Quality Assessment

Technical Background of NiNA+

3 NiNA+ Network Quality Assessment

SwissQual has developed NiNA already in 2001. The main structures of NiNA form
also an integrated part in ITU-T P.563, which was developed in a joint process and
was approved in 2003. However, ITU-T P.563 is a very complex model, which doesnt
allow to be integrated in low-performing platforms such as mobile operating systems or
DSP solutions.
Due to the progress in the transmission technologies and the experiences made
SwissQual decided to re-construct their own single-ended model widely. Since, the
used methods of NiNA as well as the performance were improved significantly, the
developed solution were renamed into NiNA+. It shows the relationship within SwissQuals family of measurements but signalizes also the step forwards.
Like NiNA also NiNA+ is predicting a MOS value on the well-known 1 to 5 point scale.
NiNA+ takes into account the full range of distortions occurring in public switched telephone networks and that is able to predict the speech quality on a perception based
scale MOS-LQO according to ITU-T Recommendation P.800.1.
In addition NiNA+ re-uses and extends the so-called cause-analysis, which gives
detailed information about the reason of a quality degradation in a technical manner.
New in NiNA+ is also a signal classification. Thus, NiNA+ itself can decide whether the
signal is speech or not. NiNA+ includes further a plausibility check of the signal to be
evaluated. Consequently, mis-predictions are avoided in case of signals, which are not
fulfilling the requirements such as silence or non-speech signals.
Of course, NiNA+ is providing additional information about the speech signal such as
speech and noise level, interruptions and clippings as it should be expected from single ended measurement approaches.

3.1 Technical Background of NiNA+

As mentioned in the previous chapter, in comparison to SwissQuals SQuad-LQ (a socalled double-ended method) that compares a high quality reference signal to the
degraded signal on a basis of a perceptual model, NiNA+ predicts the Listening Quality
without any knowledge about the input reference signal.
The NiNA+ approach could be visualized as a human expert who is listening to a real
call with a test device like a conventional handset into the line in parallel. This visualization is also the main application and allows the user to rate the scores gained by
NiNA+.
After filtering excluding signal parts outside of the telephone band, the active voice
parts are assigned. Based on this voice activity detector (VAD), the signal and noise
level is calculated.
The following analysis is detection and scoring the unnaturalness of the speech.
Therefore, models and expectations on human speech signals are used. Furthermore,
interruptions, clippings, saturations and bandwidth limitations are analyzed.

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Technical Requirements and Performance

Finally, a set of quality describing characteristics are calculated and mapped into the
MOS-LQO.
Based on these characteristics also the cause analysis and the signal classification is
done.

3.2 Technical Requirements and Performance

SwissQuals NiNA+ solution runs on Windows 32bit platform. It requires only a
speech signal with 8000 Hz sampling frequency as input. Because of SwissQuals consequent run time optimization, it requires only 0.25% of the speech sample duration for
the complete calculation on a state of the art Pentium 4 processor (2.6 GHz) .
The test requires INTEL CPUs and a 50% active speech is assumed.

For comparison, it runs nearly 100 times fast than ITU-T P.563 and even more than 20
times faster than SwissQuals speed optimized solution for P.563.
SwissQuals NiNA+ solution runs also on Windows 32bit platform. This low complexity makes NiNA+ to an ideal component at low performing platforms such as mobile
phone operating systems and digital signal processors.
Furthermore, the NiNA+ method has the following useful requirements on the speech
signal to be assessed to avoid false predictions or malfunctions.

Sampling Frequency: The sampling frequency has to be 8000 Hz and a linear

quantized PC-signal (16bit) is required.
The conversion from other formats is not part of the algorithm itself and has to be
done separately. This process is done automatically by SwissQuals QoS measurement systems, therefore no further work needs to be done by the customer.

Speech Sample Length: A sample length between 5 and 20 seconds is recommended.

The signal length will be checked by SwissQuals QoS system. Defined sample
length below 5 seconds will be not accepted. Sample length of above 20 seconds
will result in a warning message and will be truncated at 20 seconds. It is recommended that the speech activity has to be in minimum 25%, but more than three
seconds and should not exceed 90% (especially for short samples).

Minimum Speech Activity: The main requirement is the minimum amount of

active speech in the file.
To obtain accurate results the speech signal should contain, at least 3 seconds of
active speech. Otherwise, the processing might lead to wrong results, because the
balance between voiced and unvoiced sections is not given anymore. Even for
auditory tests with human listeners a minimum speech activity of 4 seconds is recommended. To avoid a mal-function, the configuration of the measurement probe
does not allow the definition of speech sample length below 5 seconds. Nevertheless, the active speech might under-run the minimum speech activity. Consequently, SwissQuals QoS system is configured not to process speech samples
with less than 3 sec active speech, instead a warning message is displayed.

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Technical Requirements and Performance

Speech Level: NiNA+ accepts range of active speech level from -16 dBov down to
-45dBov.
Higher levels will lead to annoying clippings of the higher amplitudes. However, if
the high speech level is caused by the network under test, it should be considered
in the quality but if the clipping is caused by measurement interface, it will lead to
artificial quality impacts.
Likewise, measurements with low speech level will have a decreasing signal-noiseratio caused by the limited digital resolution of the used A/D converter in the measurement environment. This will also lead to additional quality impacts. SwissQuals QoS system will ensure the proper level adjustment for all supported cellular
phones and ISDN/PSTN cards. Only in the transparent mode by using arbitrary terminals the customer it self has to control the correct level adjustment. For that reason speech levels, which are out of the recommended range, will be highlighted in
red color by analyzing the results in SwissQuals NQDI data interface. Files with a
speech level of below -65dBov will be not analyzed and a warning message will be
displayed.

Accuracy of predicted Listening Quality: The accuracy of the NiNA+ model was
by using large speech databases covering the complete scope of todays public
switched telephone networks.
The performance against well-known databases from the ITU-T set is shown
below. Due to the target applications from SwissQuals QoS system, a strong focus
was set for an outstanding performance in real live network connections, such as
the mentioned test real GSM with handset variations. The numbers are describing
the correlation coefficient between the MOS values obtained in the auditory tests
and the predicted scores by NiNA+. Therefore a third-order mapping was applied
before calculation of the correlation. The results below are comparing the NiNA+
performance with the current ITU-T standard P.563.

Table 3-1: Correlation coefficients between MOS values obtained in auditory tests and scores of
NiNA+
Speech Database

ITU-T P.563

NiNA+

Suppl. 23, Exp. 1 Am. English

0.902

0.905

Suppl. 23, Exp. 1 Japanese

0.842

0.918

Suppl. 23, Exp. 3 Am. English

0.916

0.857

Suppl. 23, Exp. 3 Japanese

0.929

0.903

Real GSM handsets, different

positions

0.895

0.925

Real GSM Background Noises

0.935

Real VoIP

0.950

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Fig. 3-1: NiNA+ Listening Quality values for noise-free speech transmissions

This database shown in figure 3-1 is taken from the G.729 characterization phase of
ITU-T and consists of a wide range of existing codecs and combinations thereof. The
results given are on a so-called per-condition basis, which means the results of four
samples transmitted through the same application scenario were averaged.

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Fig. 3-2: NiNA+ Listening Quality values in GSM connections using real handsets

This database shown in figure 3-2 is taken from a subjective test performed or ITU-T
within the P.563 competition phase. It was organized by SwissQual in the Deutsche
Telekom Laboratories in Berlin. Compared to the common ITU-T databases, where
simulated speech files are used this test contains speech recordings in real GSM circuits. The speech signals were inserted in the handset microphone using an artificial
mouth in different acoustical environments.

3.3 NiNA+ Measurement Results

The following figures and results were taken from SwissQuals post-processing tool
NDQI. However the same set of results will be supported by applying SwissQuals
NiNA+ solution in other environments.
After the measurement results are imported into NQDI the analysis of the results can
be done as shown in . Here a complete overview about all of the obtained results is
given. In addition to the calculated parameters also the signal envelope as well as the
signal in the dime domain is graphically presented.

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Sequences without or to less speech activity will be also analyzed but they will be signalized separately within SwissQuals QoS systems and instead of the results the information Silence or Speech Activity too low will be presented.

Fig. 3-3: Example of NiNA+ measurements shown in NQDI

Typically, of most interest to the users is the Listening Quality value gained by figure 2-1 applying NiNA+. In line with ITU-T Recommendation P.800.1 it is called MOSLQO where the LQO stands for Listening Quality Objective. The MOS-LQO is defined
in range 1 to 5 where 1 is standing for bad and 5 for excellent speech quality. In real
measurements, the value will scarcely exceed 4.5.
In addition to the MOS-LQO, further analysis can be done by analyzing the average
section in NQDI.
The following values are presented in an average section:

MOS-LQO provided by NiNA+

Speech Level in dB OVL

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Noise Level in dB OVL

Static SNR in dB

Amplitude Clipping in %

Speech Activity in %

DC Offset in %

Pitch frequency in Hz

Main Signal Distortion

Signal Class

The MOS-LQO is truly the main result of the analysis and gives an overview about the
quality in a single number result. To give a bit more feeling about the results, which can
be expected, the following table lists results obtained by analyzing coded speech with
typical speech codecs.
Table 3-2: Typical MOS values of auditory tests and NiNA+
Codec

Typical MOS-LQS (Auditory

Test)

Typical MOS-LQO (NiNA+)

G.711

4.3

4.4

G.729

3.8

3.8

G.728

3.7

3.7

G.726 (32kbit/s)

3.9

3.8

GSM-FR

3.5

3.2

GSM-EFR

3.9

3.8

"Speech Activity" is a ratio in percentage.

Number of speech frames / Total number of frames * 100
If this value is 50 % then the number of speech active frames equal to the number
of silent frames. The higher this number is the higher is a speech density in an
input signal. As mentioned above, NiNA+ can deal with a range of 20 to 90%. A
minimum amount of 3s active speech is required for both approaches. The Speech
Activity as well as the Speech Level will be calculated by internal voice activity
detection, the results are similar, but not identical, to ITU-T P.56 Active Speech
Level.

"Speech Level" shows the R.M.S. level of all frames containing active speech.
Because silent intervals and speech pauses will be not considered, it is a good
measure for the actual speech level control in the channel. The Speech Level is
presented in dB rel. to the Overload Point (32768 for 16Bit quantization) and is
close to Active Speech Level according ITU-T P.56.

"Noise Level" is an estimation of the background noise floor.

It is mainly calculated by the noise occurring in speech pauses. The Noise Level is
the r.m.s. in dB rel. to the Overload Point (32768 for 16Bit quantization) and is
spectral un-weighted (linear filter response for calculating) except a weak telephony band pass.

"Static SNR" gives brief information about the signal-to-noise ratio of the signal.

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Here the ratio between the active speech and the estimated background noise floor
is calculated.

"Pitch Frequency" is a value which represents a pitch frequency of the input signal
in Hz.
The Pitch Frequency in case of speech signal is the fundamental oscillation of the
talkers vocal tract. Typical pitch frequencies for female speakers are in the range
100 to 200 Hz and for male speaker in a range 50 to 150 Hz. Even the Pitch Frequency is out of the telephone pass-band, it can be recovered by analyzing harmonic oscillations in upper frequencies.

"DC Offset": This number shows a constant value of the input signal in percentage.
Human ear can not perceive a DC Offset. The DC-Offset will not influence the quality score because it will neither be transmitted by the transducer in the terminal nor
perceived by a human ear. But a certain amount of DC Offset (>0.5%) signalizes
problems in the terminal interface or in the transmission channel itself.

"Amplitude Clipping": The latest versions of NiNA+ present the Amplitude Clipping
as a separate value.
In this case the corresponding label is enabled. This value describes roughly an
estimated amount of amplitude clipping. Since, no reference signal is available and
the hard saturation in the time signal might be affected by filtering, hence, this figure will only react on severe detectable clippings.

"Signal Class" classifies the analyzed signal into

Clean speech

Noisy speech

No speech

In case of No Speech, no MOS-LQO is calculated but the signal level.

"Problem code" shows a possible cause for the speech degradation.

It is possible to see more then one cause (code) in the average section. There are
eight different problem codes:

" Background noise" is signalized if the Noise Level is higher than -50 dB or the
static SNR is below 20 dB

"Modulated Noise" occurs when the segmental SNR is under-run a defined multidimensional threshold. It signalizes mainly signal-form speech codecs.

"Interruptions flag" is set to true if one or more signal interruptions are detected in a
speech signal

"Level problem" occurs if the signal level exceeds the nominal level for more then
10 dB. Likewise, this problem will be also signalized if the signal level will fall 12dB
below nominal level. Nominal speech level is -26 dBov (dB to digital overload
point).

"DC Offset" problem is shown when the DC offset of speech signal has exceeded
the predefined thresholds of +/- 0.2 %.

"Amplitude clipping" is shown if the saturation of the signal will lead to significant
distortions.

"Restricted Audio Bandwidth" is flagged if there a significant limitation relatively to

the expected telephone band (3003400) can be detected.

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"NotSpecified" signalizes that the speech quality is degraded but no outstanding

reason for that degradation could be classified

"OK" shows that the speech quality is nearly non-degraded

"Silence" and "LowSpeechActivity" are also signalized, but no "MOS-LQO" is calculated

The next step in the analysis is done by looking at the signal envelope as well as by
listening to the live recordings.

3.3.1 Analyzing Envelope of Received Signal

The signal envelope is graphically presented. It provides the experienced user with visual charts information on amplitude clippings, background noises and interruption.
Especially the locations of interruptions are marked separately by vertical lines. At the
top of the line the detected length of the interruption is printed in ms figure 3-4.

Fig. 3-4: Signal Envelope [dB] (Received Speech Signal)

The envelope below presents the signal in the common time domain format figure 3-5.
Also here the experienced user can obtain some information as peaks and amplitude
clippings.

Fig. 3-5: Time Domain Chart (Received Speech Signal)

Furthermore, the NQDI presentation sheet gives the possibility to play back the
received sample by using the default or a specified audio player as well as several
options to export the results into external tables or text documents.

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