DoCoMo Improves Speech Quality in Mobile Phones

Japan's DoCoMo has announced that it's USA based research labs have developed speech coding technology that provides exceptionally high-quality voice for mobile phones, yet only requires the low-level computing power of conventional mobile telephony technologies.

This new technology realizes a wide frequency range of 50Hz - 16kHz, which is approximately the full range of the human voice. By comparison, the frequency range of legacy telephony services is limited to 300Hz - 3.4kHz.

The technology employs speech compression that is matched to the specific characteristics of human auditory perception, such as the fact that distortion in loud sounds is relatively imperceptible.

The resulting voice quality is said to be so realistic that conversations via mobile phones sound as if the other person were in the same room.

The technology will be especially helpful in mobile applications where voice quality is particularly critical, such as teleconferencing and remote education.

DoCoMo is continuing to develop its speech coding technology for commercialization in the foreseeable future."

Posted to the site on 3rd April 2007