Speech Quality in Telecommunications -- Speech QualityMeasurement Methods -- Optimization and Application of Integral Quality Estimation Models -- Diagnostic Instrumental Speech QualityModel.-Evaluation of DIAL -- Conclusions and Outlooks -- Modulated Noise Reference Unit (MNRU).-Databases test-plan.

This work deals with the instrumental measurement methods for the perceived quality of transmitted speech. These measures simulate the speech perception process employed by human subjects during auditory experiments. The measure standardized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), called - Wideband-Perceptual Speech Quality Evaluation (WB-PESQ), is not able to quantify all these perceived characteristics on a unidimensional quality scale, the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) scale. Recent experimental studies showed that subjects make use of several perceptual dimensions to judge about the quality of speech signals. In order to represent the signal at a higher stage of perception, a new model, called Diagnostic Instrumental Assessment of Listening quality (DIAL), has been developed. It includes a perceptual and a cognitive model which simulate the whole quality judgment process. Except for strong discontinuities, DIAL predicts very well speech quality of different speech processing and transmission systems, and it outperforms the WB-PESQ.