Host laboratory role in the selection of the future NATO narrow band voice coder

This paper describes the role and responsibilities of the host laboratory in the multi-national test and selection process for the future NATO narrow band voice coder standard. The selection was made from a number of implementations of narrow band voice coders submitted by NATO member nations. Voice coders were installed on a voice processing workstation at the host laboratory in fixed and floating point forms, together with a number of reference coders. The voice coders were then comprehensively tested in a wide range of noise environments and conditions which were representative of military scenarios. Over 500 hours of processed speech was generated and analysed during these tests.