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2N TELEKOMUNIKACE a.s., www.2n.cz
®
2.4 IP Voice Transmission
Speech Encoding Methods
Voice transmission is strictly separated from signalling in VoIP networks. Modern VoIP
networks mostly use the RTP (Realtime Transport Protocol) for voice transmission. The
purpose of the RTP is only to transmit data (voice) from a source to a destination at
real time. Codecs are used to save the channel data capacity. Codecs process the voice
signal using variable algorithms to minimise the volume of user data. The degree of
compression used by the codec affects the quality of voice transmission. Thus, the
better voice transmission is required, the wider data range (the higher transmission
rate) is needed. The MOS (Mean Opinion Score) scale is used for rating voice
transmission quality, where 1 means the worst and 5 the best quality. For a survey of
the codecs supported by
refer to the table below.
2N VoiceBlue Next
®
Standard
Algorithm
Transmission rate [kbps]
MOS
G.711a
PCM
64
4.1
G.711u
PCM
64
4.1
G.729
*
CS–ACELP
8
3.92
[*]
G.729 is an optional part of the system.
For
, quadruple the above mentioned rates (two fully duplex
2N VoiceBlue Next
®
calls) and add the TCP and IP header transmission rate to the result to get the
resultant transmission rate.
It is important to keep both a stable appropriate transmission rate during connection
and a small and identical transmission time per data packet in order to maintain a
high-quality voice transmission.
G.711 – this codec is used in digital telephone networks. The PCM (Pulse Code
Modulation) is used for voice signal encoding. The sampled signal is encoded in
12 bits and then compressed using a non-linear scheme into the resultant 8 bits.
Europe uses the A-law compression system while North America and Japan obey
the µ-law. The resultant data flow is 64 kbps.
G.729
–
this
codec
uses
the
CS-ACELP
(Conjugate-Structure
Algebraic-Code-Excited Linear-Prediction) algorithm with the resultant
transmission rate of 8 kbps. The speech signal is split into blocks of 10 ms each.
The parameters of these blocks are then inserted in frames of the size of 10
bytes. 2-byte frames are generated for noise transmission.
During call set-up, a codec is selected automatically for voice transmission.
2N
®
supports the codecs included in the table above. The type of codec to
VoiceBlue Next
be used depends on your VoIP network (individual devices) and your
2N VoiceBlue
®
configuration.
is designed primarily for VoIP corporate
Next
2N
VoiceBlue Next
®
networks and tries to meet the opponent's codec requirements. If a codec is requested
that is incompatible with
, the call will be rejected.
2N VoiceBlue Next
®
The SIP and ITU-T H.323 recommended protocols are mostly used for connection
establishing, maintaining and cancelling.
uses the
(Session
2N VoiceBlue Next
®
SIP
Initiation Protocol) signalling.