In-Car Communication: Measuring communication quality in vehicles with HEAD acoustics automated test suite

20. October 2020

• Acoustic measurements according to international recommendation ITU-T P.1150
• Automated tests cover all relevant acoustic parameters
• Optimize the entire system as well as individual components

In-car communication (ICC) systems help to improve communication in the vehicle between the occupants. To ensure a base level of functionality and quality of ICC systems, the international standardization body ITU-T has defined appropriate tests in Recommendation P.1150. HEAD acoustics has now implemented this recommendation as automated test sequences for the communication quality analysis software ACQUA, thus enabling comprehensive acoustic measurements of ICC systems and components in accordance with the international recommendation.

Measurements cover all relevant acoustic parameters

In combination with additional HEAD acoustics measurement equipment, the measurements implemented in the test suite cover all relevant acoustic parameters of ICC systems. Manufacturers of systems or individual components can test and optimize the effects of listening effort, acoustic stability and the signal-to-noise ratio of their devices in accordance with the standard. In addition, measurements of double talk attenuation and the delay between the original voice and the voice transmitted by the ICC system are available. The test suite P.1150 supports vehicles with A²B^® technology. In conjunction with the A²B^® interface of HEAD acoustics hardware platform labCORE, users can easily record background noise via A²B^® and insert it digitally via the bus to test the ICC system. The ACQUA test suite also employs a technique called “Time Domain Signal Subtraction”. This method allows compensating background noise and/or unwanted speech signals in the time domain and is used to extract, for example, only the audio signals that are transmitted by the ICC system itself. In this way, users can, e.g. analyze the recorded speech without the interior noise of the vehicle.

Optimize the entire system as well as individual components

"With our automated and standards-compliant solution, manufacturers can not only optimize positioning of hands-free microphones and loudspeakers, but also tune the interaction between hardware and software components," reports Christian Schüring, Sales Manager Telecom at HEAD acoustics GmbH. "This enables optimization of communication quality of the entire ICC system as well as individual components.”