Extending the E-Model Towards Super-Wideband and Fullband Speech Communication Scenarios

In order to plan speech communication services regarding the quality experienced by their users, parametric models have been used since a long time. These models predict the overall quality experienced by a communication partner on the basis of parameters describing the elements of the transmission channel and the terminal equipment. The mostly used model is the E-model which is standardized in ITU-T Rec. G.107 for narrowband and in ITU-T Rec. G.107.1 for wideband scenarios. However, with the advent of super-wideband and fullband transmission, the E-model needs to be extended. In this paper, we propose a first version of an extended E-model which addresses both super-wideband and fullband scenarios, and which predicts the effects of speech codecs, packet loss, and delay as the most important degradations to be expected in such scenarios. Predictions are compared to the results of listening-only and conversational tests as well as to signal-based predictions, showing a reasonable prediction accuracy.