FAA Technical Center, Atlantic City International Airport, NJ 08405

58 -- VOICE DIGITIZING EQUIPMENT FOR EVALUATION OF APPLICABILITY TO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL APPLICATIONS SOL DTFA03- POC Anthony (Buzz) Cerino, (609) 485-5640; Alternate Contacts: John Petro, (609) 485-5436; Ed Coleman (609) 485-4592. It is the intent of the FAA to evaluate technology in the area of voice coding equipment to determine applicability for use in national and international air/ground communications. Suppliers willing to assist in this effort are encouraged to contact the above for the purpose of submitting equipment for evaluation. Subject equipment will be evaluated within a standardized test bed. For specifications and information on the standardized test bed, please contact the above contact points. Equipment not meeting the following requirements shall not be tested further: a) maximum bit rate of 4800 bps (including all FEC); b) maximum back-to-back delay of 80 msec back-to-back delay less than 80 msec is desired back-to-back delay measured from analog input of test bed to analog output of test bed through the correlation of voice waveforms; c) an integer number of Vocoder frames shall be equal to 120 msec; d) operate in a half duplex push to talk (PTT) mode; e) equipment provided must interface with the standardized test bed setup. The encoder and decoder shall be two separate units. RS422 into and out of the encoder. RS422 into and out of the decoder. Obtain a copy of test bed specifications from above contracts; f) duplicates of submitted equipment must be available for testing by multiple international sources (at reasonable costs). The following performance criteria shall apply: a) good voice quality maintained down to a BER of 1x10-3; b) intelligibility should be maintained down to a BER of 2x10-2; c) intelligibility maintained at a maximum bit rate of 4000 bps or less (including all FEC) for special operations; d) voice quality performance in high level background noise environments; e) voice quality performance in tandem with other digital voice techniques; f) voice quality performance using speakers of multiple languages. All submissions must include or shall not be tested: 1) complete documentation on system operation; 2) company policy regarding algorithm licensing; 3) disclosure plans for international standardization and manufacturing. Any equipment/documentation submited shall be considered proprietary and not be provided to any competitor. The FAA will not be responsible for any costs incurred by any contributor as a result of their participation, and there is no guarantee of any solicitation as a result of this study. Equipment should be submitted no later than January 12, 1996, after which no updates in software or hardware will be considered. All equipment/documentation will be returned following completion of the evaluation. Any questions regarding this CBD announcement should be submitted in writing to Mr. Cerino via FAX (609) 485-7336. (0272)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0233 19951002\58-0009.SOL)