Derivation of E-model Equipment Impairment Factors for Narrowband and Wideband Opus Codec Using the Instrumental Method

Abstract

Real-time multimedia applications like Web realtime communication WebRTC support a wide range of codecs, from the standard narrowband up to fullband codecs. The IETF standardized Opus codec is the default codec utilized by WebRTC speech and audio applications, by supporting a wide range of bitrates. In current best effort networks, network impairments such as packet loss, delay and jitter affect the quality of VoIP. To assess the impact of such impairments in order to estimate the quality experienced by the end users of speech applications, the E-model standardized in ITU-T Rec. G.107 can be used. In this paper we derive codec-specific parameters required by the E-model to estimate the quality degradation in speech applications deploying narrowband and wideband Opus codec, namely the equipment impairment factor Ie and packet loss robustness factor Bpl. We followed the ITU-T methods designed for this purpose and share the results arising from all the experiments covering all the narrowband and wideband Opus codec conditions. The derived values make it possible to integrate the E-model in realtime communication applications including WebRTC to assess the quality experienced by the end user.