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The Benefits of Multi-Speaker Conferencing and the Design of Conference Bridge Control Algorithms ABSTRACT Conferencing over narrowband digital voice communication systems is limited to simplex broadcast and other limited modes because of system bandwidth, tandem limitations, an the inability of some algorithms to represent multiple speakers. Advances in narrowband algorithms show promise in representing multiple speakers. This research looked at the benefits to be gained with a multi-speaker narrowband conference capability and sets design parameters for such a system. It has provided subjective opinions of 18 conferencing systems by 16 subjects, audio recordings of input and output channels for each subject and system, and data files that detail the speech activity and channel switch settings for each subject and system every 50ms. An important conferencing objective or conference type effect has been found. That is, for different types of discussion, the speech dynamics and system requirements are substantially different. Various speech/bridge dynamic states are evaluated. The percent time that the system is in these states is provided along with interval distributions. |