Public Funding for Trilogy Communications Limited

The aim of the VoiceFlow Project is to demonstrate an innovative Internet Protocol Suite (IPS)-based Head-set Junction Box (the VoiceFlow Communicator) and central VoiceFlow Server architecture to provide high quality binaural (separate left and right signals) audio for secure, configurable intercom voice communications. This will provide an all-digital, high quality audio over standard Internet Protocol (IP) networks (with a target of 256 concurrent IP flows). This will first be demonstrated in military applications (where advanced operational and secure services exist) and will later be applied to other key markets e.g. Broadcast and Emergency Services. Present day large-scale, IP, intercom voice networks suffer from excessive latency, are not all digital and so cannot provide a flexible and acceptable audio experience while maintaining a high quality audio requirement. A new approach for an end-to-end IP-based system is required to enable hundreds of concurrent IP voice binaural links. The VoiceFlow solution will provide a first to market opportunity. Innovation occurs through the creation of new algorithms to enable the binaural signals to be: a) Efficiently transported using the IP infrastructure i.e. to minimize latency while maintaining lossless audio encoding; b) Accurately replicated in the user’s headset and the combination of these with Dolby algorithms to produce 3D simulated sound from the binaural signals. A state-of-the art survey has shown there is no published, standardized, licensable or commercial solution to either of these requirements. Successful delivery of these novel features will result in benefits for both Trilogy and external end users, providing: a) Unique capability to improve or eliminate traditional problems related to audio latency, echo and multipath speech intelligibility; b) Drive down ‘end user’ cost of ownership through lower operational/installation costs as well as significantly reducing the hardware ‘footprint'.