Advances in Perceptual Speech Quality Assessment

In the context of telecommunications, speech quality is the most visible and important aspects of quality of service (QoS), and the ability to monitor and design for this quality should be a top priority. Speech quality refers to the clearness of a speaker’s voice as perceived by a listener. Its measurement offers a means of adding the human end-user’s perspective to traditional ways of performing network management evaluation of voice telephony services. Traditionally, measurement of users’ perception of speech quality has been performed by expensive and time-consuming subjective listening tests. Over the last three decades, numerous attempts have been made to supplement subjective tests with objective measurements based on algorithms that can be computerised and automated. This paper describes the technicalities associated with speech quality measurement, and presents a review of current subjective and objective speech quality evaluation methods and standards in telecommunications.