PESQ

PESQ, Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality, is a family of standards comprising a test methodology for automated assessment of the speech quality as experienced by a user of a telephony system. It is standardized as ITU-T recommendation P.862 (02/01). Today, PESQ is a worldwide applied industry standard for objective voice quality testing used by phone manufacturers, network equipment vendors and telecom operators. Its usage requires a license. PESQ, Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality, is a family of standards comprising a test methodology for automated assessment of the speech quality as experienced by a user of a telephony system. It is standardized as ITU-T recommendation P.862 (02/01). Today, PESQ is a worldwide applied industry standard for objective voice quality testing used by phone manufacturers, network equipment vendors and telecom operators. Its usage requires a license. PESQ was particularly developed to model subjective tests commonly used in telecommunications (e.g. ITU-T P.800) to assess the voice quality by human beings. Consequently, PESQ employs true voice samples as test signals. In order to characterize the listening quality as perceived by users, it is of paramount importance to load modern telecom equipment with speech-like signals. Many systems are optimized for speech and would respond in an unpredictable way to non-speech signals (e.g. tones, noise). Guidelines for proper applications of voice test samples are defined in the PESQ application guide ITU-T P.862.3. ITU-T’s family of full reference objective voice quality measurements started in 1997 with P.861 (PSQM), which was superseded by P.862 (PESQ) in 2001. P.862 was later complemented with the recommendations P.862.1 (mapping of PESQ scores to a MOS scale), P.862.2 (wideband measurements) and P.862.3 (application guide). Since 2011 P.863 (POLQA) is in force. Two additional implementer’s guides for P.863 have been consented by ITU-T Study Group 12 in November 2011. In addition to the above listed full reference methods, the list of ITU-T’s objective voice quality measurement standards also includes P.563 (no-reference algorithm).