AcSoft - Telecommunications Testing

Once the exclusive domain of the London Docklands Yuppie, mobile telephones are now an essential part of the life of millions of Britons.

Using these mobiles in everyday life presents special problems, with high background noise often causing problems with intelligibility, especially in cars.

Similarly, the signal strength of the network has a direct bearing on telephone quality, and testing needs the flexibility of a binaural test head.

A variant of the successful HMS Sound Quality HEAD, the HMS II.3 features standardised voice and ear simulators, with a new HHP II handset holder, to ensure a representative measurement in high background noise.

Advanced applications include the VDA specification for performance of hands-free kits in cars. ACQUA handles this with ease

Telecommunications Testing

Our lives are increasingly dependent on telecommunications, both for voice communication as well as data. The fact you are reading this means that you are hooked up to the most complex and bewildering telecommunications network ever.

Quality is becoming more important in all aspects of life, and digital telephony in particular has dramatically improved the acoustic quality of telephone networks. Measuring these quality parameters is a nightmare of international and national standards, requiring an extremely flexible measurement platform.

The Advanced Communications Quality Analysis System, ACQUA, from HEAD acoustics is one such platform, bringing powerful signal processing to applications such as telephone testing in R&D, approvals testing and evaluation of DSP-based noise cancelling technologies.

Highspeed internet is everywhere, and one of the upcoming applications is Voice-over-IP or internet telephony. This packet-based technology gives many problems for speech quality, and HEAD acoustics have been pioneering measurements in this field.

ACQUA handles this with ease, and many unique capabilities are available with ACQUA-IP systems.

Mobile & Loudspeaking Telephony

VoIP testing

Telephone Testing

Standardised testing of both analog and digital telephones is made easy with ACQUA.

For example, all the tests under TBR10 can be carried out automatically or manually, with direct digital connection of the phone to the system via protocol simulators

To optimise interfacing with electroacoustic devices and ear/voise simulators, HEAD acoustics have developed the MFE VI, which is a USB-based front end. The MFE VI has powering and conditioning for condenser microphones, as well as 600ohm balanced input/output for device connection.

The new MFE VIII has all the necessary protocols and interfaces for VoIP testing, supporting the new test measurements standard for these phones.