Ntt DoCoMo announced recently that it has developed a highly efficient mobile spatial audio transmission technology. This technology enables a mobile phone user to allocate a spatial position to each sound source while they are listening to multiple sound sources, for instance, during a game or a conference call.
This technology essentially allows a user listening with headphones to hear each speaker’s voice as if it were coming from a distinctive direction. This enables the user to experience a virtual face-to-face communication environment.
DoCoMo is currently continuing research and development of this technology so that it can be eventually commercialized. There are various applications that this technology can be used for including mobile conference calls, tele-education and online games.
The audio encoding/decoding and spatial audio synthesis are independently processed by existing spatial audio transmission technologies. The new technology presents a more efficient method by combining the two processes, thus minimizing bitrate (or bandwidth) and computation loads. This makes it more suitable for mobile phones and other resource-limited devices.
The processes are jointly performed on both the server as well as the client sides. The server classifies the important sound components of each speaker’s voice, packs them together into a single stream and sends it to the mobile phones. Each phone then decodes the received stream and at the same time synthesizes spatial audio images.
During Wireless Technology Park 2009 held at Pacifico Yokohama, DoCoMo will exhibit its new spatial audio transmission technology using DoCoMo PRO series HT-01A handsets.