INTERNSHIP REPORT

Center for Advanced Research in Engineering (CARE)

BY Rabeea Imran

PROJECT ASSIGNED G.729a Voice Coders

SUPERVISED BY Sir Hammad

FROM 10th June 2013 TO 2nd August 2013

PREFACE

This report has been submitted in the partial fulfillment for the summer internship program at Center for Advanced Research in Engineering (CARE). The report primarily focuses on assignment handled, success and the experience I earned as an internee at CARE.

INTRODUCTION
As an intern, I have been assigned to work on G.729A voice coder under the supervision of Sir Hammad. Our assigned task was to optimize the performance of voice coder by reducing the look ahead delays. I started my internship on 10th June 2013. It was an 8 weeks internship program. I chose CARE as it suited my choice of gaining experience in a research Organization as it benefits a university student more than any business oriented organization. For first two weeks we were given training on code composer studio. We made short beginners C program. Then new internees joined in and we were organized onto groups and assigned projects. With a brief summary of voice coder I share my work during internship and conclude my report.

G.729A Voice coder We worked on model based voice coder which aims at transferring the parameters of speech signal and generating it synthetically at the decoder end. These parameters are extracted from the speech input through different signal processing blocks. G.729A is one of the reduced complexity standards of G.729. G.729 is ITU-T speech compression algorithm which is based on Conjugate Structured Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction (CS-ACELP). The G.729A compresses 8 kHz linear audio signals and encodes them for transmission at 8 Kbps. Input is 16 bit PCM. Input bit stream is segmented into frames of 10ms and processed. Prediction analysis is done using a synthesis filter of order 10.

MY EXPERIENCE AT WORK
In the third week of internship I, with my group met our supervisor. He gave us C codes taken from ITU-T website. We didnt have idea about speech processing before so we studied the encoder together. First we studied the big picture only i.e. without going into the details we focused on the major parts of encoder. In the fourth week of internship, we run the given C codes in Visual Studio 2012. We made two projects namely Encoder and Decoder. We run those programs but failed again and again to get any output. At the end of week we realized that we were missing giving input to the encoder and not adding some necessary files to the project. However it gave the output in form of binary file. We gave binary file with speech data written in it and got a binary back. We used MATLAB TO listen the audio encoded I terms on binary hex files. In MATLAB, we learned to make binary file (.bin) of our speech, converted binary file (.bin) to the wave file (.wav) file and played it. It was made the input to the decoder of G.729. In the fifth week we made another project on Visual Studio namely decoder and give the output binary file of encoder as an input to the decoder. The output of decoder was again a binary file which we converted into wave file on MATLAB and played it. Conversion from .bin to .wav extension was a tricky task however we done all together. Next we did profiling. In profiling run the C codes and observed the processors work load. The major functions were observed but we werent able to come up with success in this. In the sixth week of internship, we met our supervisor and showed him the work done in the form of presentation. He guided us to study more and ensured us that he would try his best to equip us with DSP kit. Meanwhile he asked to go in more detail of topic. We decided to write a document to summarize our findings. I chose Linear Prediction analysis and studied a whole week. In seventh week and eighth week, I worked on a document on LPC.

Issue in assigned task:

Following issues were encountered: 1) Issue in finding the relevant material. Through rigorous search we found good and easy to go material 2) Handling binary files in MATLAB was the issue. MATLAB help and various Mathwork sites Solution: we used a software Songverter in which the file can be converted to desired format 3) hardware was lacking

Comments on assignment:
The assigned task was very interesting and demanding too. This project is worth taking as a full time final year project by undergraduates. Much of the work has already been done in past but optimization still is a challenging task.

Working environment:
Working environment was very comfortable and friendly. Air conditioned and fully equipped room was provided. Our queries were entertained. A little problem was faced regarding food and snack was there. I recommend that there should be a temporary card for internees so that they can take things on that card and with this buying and taking should be kept in record.

SUMMARY:
I have to attest my supervisor for his kind support all the way through internship. It was really a learning experience at CARE. Everyone cooperated fully to fulfill the need of interns. I would prefer my juniors at my college to turn up to CARE when taking a decision on internship organization.