| This paper describes the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) speech codec recently selected by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) for GSM and the third generation mobile communication WCDMA system for providing wideband speech services. The paper describes AMR-WB standardization history, algorithmic description including novel techniques for efficient ACELP wideband speech coding, and subjective quality performance. The AMR-WB speech codec algorithm was selected in December 2000, and the corresponding specifications were approved in March 2001. In July 2001, the AMR-WB codec was also selected by ITU-T in the standardization activity for wideband speech coding around 16 kbit/s. The adoption of AMR-WB by ITU-T is of significant importance since for the first time that the same codec is adopted for wireless as well as wireline services. AMR-WB uses an extended audio bandwidth from 3.4 kHz to 7 kHz and gives superior speech quality and voice naturalness compared to existing 2nd and 3rd generation mobile communication systems. The wideband speech service provided by the AMR-WB codec will give mobile communication speech quality that also substantially exceeds (narrowband) wireline quality. |
