Technical Committee (TC) Speech and Multimedia Transmission Quality (STQ) Activity Report 2023

Chair: Scott Isabelle, Amazon

Responsible for standardization relating to terminals and networks for speech and media quality, end-to-end single media and multimedia transmission performance, Quality of Service (QoS) parameters for networks and services and Quality of Experience (QoE) descriptors and methods.

ETSI’s Speech and Multimedia Transmission Quality committee creates and maintains standards relating to speech and end-to-end media quality performance for terminals and networks. The main objectives of TC STQ standardization activities cover:

  • Terminals and networks for speech and media quality.
  • Quality of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies and VR/VR based services.
  • End-to-end single media and multimedia transmission performance.
  • Voice Control and Internet of Things (IoT) – performance parameters and test methods.
  • Quality of Service (QoS) parameters and related measurement methodology for fixed and mobile networks and services, as well as respective Quality of Experience (QoE) descriptors and methods.

The committee’s focus is to ensure the co-ordination, production and maintenance of end-to-end quality related deliverables, for the timely and economic development of equipment for use with existing and future fixed and mobile network telecommunications service offerings. In addition, these deliverables facilitate continuous quality assessment of the respective services.

With its Working Group STQ Mobile the committee liaises with 3GPP, ITU-T and other organizations to support development of specifications for test methods, equipment and performance requirements for use in existing and future network telecommunications services, both fixed and mobile.

During 2023 TC STQ continued to augment its suite of deliverables, reflected in the following publications:

  • Technical Specification TS 103 802 V1.1.1 ‘Objective test method for the evaluation of echo impairments’ predicts the perception of impairments caused by echo control systems, based on the related specification for subjective test procedures.
  • Technical Report TR 103 950 V1.1.1 ‘Gender-related aspects of listening quality and effort in speech communication systems’ offers guidance on test procedures and measures for human speech communication systems to balance transmission quality among genders.
  • ES 202 396-1 V1.9.1 revises existing ETSI Standard ‘Speech quality performance in the presence of background noise; Part 1: Background noise simulation technique and background noise database’. This updates test room requirements and recommendations, while retaining backward compatibility with previous revisions.

 STQ Mobile

  • Technical Report TR 103 891 V1.1.1 ‘Parametric non-intrusive QoS evaluation of Cloud Gaming Services over RTP/UDP streaming’ extends ITU-T recommendations by considering measured or estimated end-user packet loss, round-trip time, video bitrate, framerate and information derived from game platform capabilities and streaming data.
  • Technical Report TR 103 890 V1.1.1 ‘Design of a generic approach to test network performance for OTT conversational voice applications’ provides information on designing generic OTT clients based on commonly used codec/client technology, enabling an on-device, fully controllable testing of a single OTT voice client version using a fully accessible set of KPIs.
  • TR 103 559 V1.2.1 revises existing Technical Report ‘Best practices for robust network QoS benchmark testing and scoring’, considering recent standards for speech quality prediction and reflecting emerging 5G networks.
  • TR 103 138 V1.6.1 revises existing Technical Report ‘Speech samples and their use for QoS testing’, reflecting latest technologies and standards in voice transmission and evaluation.

See the full list of STQ and STQ Mobile Work Items in development here.

STQ Workshop

Following the successful TC STQ Workshop held in Bratislava in November 2022, planning commenced for the next STQ Workshop that is anticipated to take place during 2025, with current working title "Communications for all - Supporting diversity and accessibility in speech and audio transmissions and human-machine communication.”