ODM POLQA and ODM Digital Audio

NT15-44072, 1.1, 3/30/2015

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NT15-44072, 1.1, 3/30/2015

 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Description of the ODM Services 1

2.1 ODM Digital Audio 1
2.2 ODM POLQA 2
2.2.1 Feature Support in ODM POLQA Compared to TCC 2
2.3 Licensing 3

NT15-44072, 1.1, 3/30/2015

 1 Introduction
This document describes the on-device services ODM POLQA and ODM Digital Audio,
which are used for handling of voice call audio and audio quality measurement for TEMS
products.

2 Description of the ODM Services

The ODM POLQA and ODM Digital Audio services are both contained in the “ODM POLQA”
APK. The principal functions of these services and their relation to other Ascom software are
visualized in the diagram below.

ODM services used for audio quality measurement. As shown in the diagram, these services can be
involved in the measurement in varying degrees. At one extreme  is the scenario where TCC uses an
analog audio source and computes AQM scores itself: here, ODM is not involved at all. At the other
extreme  we have TEMS Pocket, which for obvious reasons is 100% reliant on the ODM services. In
between, there are “mixed” use cases: one  where the audio is extracted digitally using ODM Digital
Audio but TCC calculates AQM itself; and another  where the AQM computation is farmed out to ODM
POLQA and the results are handed to TCC.

2.1 ODM Digital Audio

ODM Digital Audio records audio from the mobile device’s Digital Audio Platform API,
tapping the digital audio stream directly from the device. It can then forward the audio either
to ODM POLQA for on-device calculation of AQM, or to another TEMS application or probe,
for example TEMS Investigation installed on a PC, or a TEMS Automatic RTU. Such TEMS
software is referred to as “TCC” (TEMS Common Components) in the following for brevity.
When used by TCC, ODM Digital Audio is perceived as an audio source similar to an
Ericsson F3607gw module or an Audio Capturing Module (ACM) housed in an ACU R2 unit.
In a Service Control script, you set the Audio Source parameter to ”Device Digital Audio” (the
same as for an F3607gw). All AQM calculations are then handled by TCC, and ODM POLQA
is not involved.

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 The key benefit of working with digital audio is that no analog/digital conversion is involved.
No audio tuning of analog gain and volume is therefore required. On a smartphone, digital
audio is minimally affected by phone settings and adjustments compared to analog audio.
Digital tuning is still required, but this is a comparatively simple procedure which essentially
consists in optimizing the playback volume. Digital audio based AQM therefore provides a
more network-centric scoring which remains more stable and comparable over time as
handset models are replaced with new ones.

2.2 ODM POLQA

ODM POLQA is an on-device service that computes audio quality metrics. It supports most
of the AQM features found in TCC, though not all of them. For example, the older PESQ
quality metric is not implemented in ODM POLQA. Full details are given in section 2.2.1.
All voice reference sentences that are played back during voice calls are stored in the ODM
POLQA APK, in the same way as in TCC. This makes ODM POLQA more convenient to
work with than ACU R2 units, since the ACMs must be flashed with the reference sentences.
Moreover, the ACM has a memory limitation of only 8–12 sentences, so that flashing is
necessary in order to switch sentences to a different language. ODM POLQA therefore more
easily accommodates multiple language support.
The output from ODM POLQA can be picked up and presented by a TEMS Pocket
application installed on the mobile device, or it can be delivered to TCC for presentation in
another TEMS product.

2.2.1 Feature Support in ODM POLQA Compared to TCC

A “new” and an “old” version of the ODM POLQA service are distinguished in this section.
The main difference between the two is that the new version performs a tight synchronization
of the playback/recording cycle engaged in by the call parties. The receiving side determines
the exact starting point of the received speech sentence, and based on this information it is
able to switch to playback mode as soon as the whole sentence has been received. The rigor
of this procedure enables measurement of speech path delay, which cannot be computed by
the old ODM POLQA service.
The synchronization just described is also a prerequisite for audio quality measurement
during a mobile-to-fixed (“M2F”) voice call sequence with alternating MO and MT calls
(where the other party is a CallGenerator).
In a mobile-to-mobile (“M2M”) configuration, both devices must have the same ODM POLQA
version installed.

TCC Voice/ ODM POLQA ODM POLQA

Feature
Digital Audio “New” “Old”

POLQA   
PESQ  – –

Synchronization   –

AQM during M2M calls or M2F

MO calls
  

AQM during M2F call sequence

with alternating MO/MT calls
  –

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 TCC Voice/ ODM POLQA ODM POLQA
Feature
Digital Audio “New” “Old”

Speech path delay   –

Speech interruption time  – –

2.3 Licensing
ODM Digital Audio requires a specific license on the mobile device.
If AQM is computed in TCC, an AQM license is required on the TCC host.
If AQM is computed on-device with ODM POLQA, a license for this service is required on the
mobile device.

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