Explainer video: Automotive 5G voice quality testing from Rohde & Schwarz and HEAD acoustics

A seamless 5G voice experience inside vehicles is something we all expect but how do car manufacturers ensure their customers experience optimum voice quality? This is especially important for applications such as Bluetooth hands-free calling and eCall. The process starts accurately measuring speech quality over a 5G connection in a lab environment, such as the HEAD acoustics facility in Aachen, Germany. To ensure standards-compliant andconsistent results, the real-world voice call scenario is reproduced in a chamber and testing is conducted at vehicle level. Complete, fully functional test system is required, including loudspeakers and microphones to create fully equalized background driving noise. This noise is the most common cause of speech intelligibility impairments. Additionally a precisely engineered artificial head is placed in the driver’s seat to simulate a driver making a call. This allows a fully repeatable representation of a real hands-free call. Ear simulators with precision microphones enable recording, while a mouth simulator allows speech playback. All system components are connected to the multi-channel hardware platform labCORE from HEAD acoustics using its high-performance analog and digital interfaces. The R&S®CMX500 5G and LTE radio communication tester fully emulates a controllable cellular network and enables audio samples to be exchanged with the labCORE. A 5G antenna is connected to the R&S®CMX500, enabling over the air network transmission and then a martphone attaches to the 5G network and connects to the car handsfree system. The R&S®CMX500, controlled by CMSquares software initiates and controls a 5G voice call and manages the exchange of audio signals to and from the labCORE. Once the system is complete, measurements like audio delay and voice quality using the ACQUA Software can be conducted. The results are presented and details such as diagrams and settings are stored in the ACQUA database. This video shows how the easy to use system developed by HEAD acoustics and Rohde&Schwarz can conduct standards-compliant tests and enable 4G and 5G voice quality to be optimized.