Behind the VoLTE Curtain, Part 6

You Can't Ride in my Little Red Wagon ... because it is Possessed by the Powers of EVS

07/29/2016 | 57 pages
Price: $1,550.00

In this Signals Ahead report we provide part two of our two-part study of the new EVS voice codec and how it compares with AMR-WB. For this independent study, we purchased four commercial smartphones (LG G5) and used the T-Mobile USA network.

Highlights of the Report include the following:

Our Thanks.  This study could not have been done without the support of Accuver Americas and Spirent Communications. Accuver provided its XCAL-M and XCAP drive test solutions, which we used to analyze the Physical Layer information. Spirent provided its Nomad User Experience Analytics System, which we used to analyze the call quality using the industry-accepted POLQA algorithm.

Our Approach.  We tested a wide range of codec configurations, using LTE, 3G and VoWi-Fi. We included stationary and mobile testing in challenging environments. We analyzed the impact of the codec configurations on the network (spectral efficiency), analyzed the call quality (MOS), and looked at the power / current requirements. We used the T-Mobile USA network, testing both in California and Minnesota.

Better Voice Quality.  True to its word, EVS can deliver better voice quality than AMR-WB. With more challenging conditions and with a noisier channel (background crowd noise) the delta can become significant. We quantify and substantiate this statement with innumerable test results and figures in the main body of the report.

More Efficient.  In most of the tests, EVS was more efficient than AMR-WB with the differences generally even more significant in the uplink direction.

What about Power? As far as we could determine, there were very little differences in the power / current consumption of the two codecs. To the extent there are differences, which we could not clearly identify, we argue that in the big picture it doesn’t matter.