Internet DRAFT - draft-marjou-rtcweb-audio-codecs-for-interop

draft-marjou-rtcweb-audio-codecs-for-interop






Network Working Group                                          X. Marjou
Internet-Draft                                                 S. Proust
Intended status: Informational                     France Telecom Orange
Expires: August 29, 2013                                     K. Bogineni
                                                        Verizon Wireless
                                                               R. Jesske
                                                               B. Feiten
                                                     Deutsche Telekom AG
                                                                 L. Miao
                                                                  Huawei
                                                               E. Enrico
                                                          Telecom Italia
                                                               E. Berger
                                                                   Cisco
                                                       February 25, 2013


     WebRTC audio codecs for interoperability with legacy networks.
            draft-marjou-rtcweb-audio-codecs-for-interop-01

Abstract

   This document presents use-cases underlining why WebRTC needs AMR-WB,
   AMR and G.722 as additional relevant voice codecs to satisfactorily
   ensure interoperability with existing systems.  It also presents a
   way forward that takes into consideration the concerns expressed
   against the addition of codecs besides Opus and G.711.

   It is especially recognized that unjustified additional costs on
   browsers must be avoided.  Therefore, the proposed solution intends
   to fully rely on the codecs already supported on the devices
   implementing the browsers and for which license and implementation
   costs have been already paid.

   It is expected that this way forward will significantly limit the
   costs and technical impacts on browsers while greatly improving
   interoperability with legacy systems and overall quality.  It intents
   to be considered as a good compromise beneficial to all parties and
   to the whole industry: the user quality experience will be optimized
   as a whole at limited additional costs without incurring high costs
   for both networks to support transcoding and browsers to support
   additional codecs.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.




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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  Definitions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.  Use cases  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     4.1.  AMR-WB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       4.1.1.  Use case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       4.1.2.  Problem  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
       4.1.3.  Concerns from the browser manufacturers  . . . . . . .  7
     4.2.  AMR  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
       4.2.1.  Use case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
       4.2.2.  Problem  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
       4.2.3.  Concerns from the browser manufacturers  . . . . . . .  8
     4.3.  G.722  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
       4.3.1.  Use case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
       4.3.2.  Problem  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
       4.3.3.  Concerns from the browser manufacturers  . . . . . . .  9
   5.  The proposed way-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   6.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   7.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   8.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   9.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     9.1.  Normative references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     9.2.  Informative references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

























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1.  Introduction

   As indicated in [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-overview], it has been anticipated
   that WebRTC will not remain an isolated island and that some WebRTC
   endpoints will need to communicate with devices used in other
   existing networks with the help of a gateway.

   In order to reach the agreement to select OPUS and G.711 as mandatory
   to implement codecs it was also agreed to consider possible
   additional codecs in order to take into account the concerns
   expressed on interoperability issues.  The discussion is consequently
   currently taking place regarding the additional voice/audio codecs
   that need to be supported.  It is mainly questioned whether Opus and
   G.711 are sufficient to properly address the interoperability issues
   with legacy systems or if additional codecs need to be supported.

   This document presents some use cases highlighting that Opus and
   G.711 are not sufficient to properly cover all interoperability
   requirements.  In Section 4, important interoperability use-cases are
   presented describing the interoperability issues that would be
   encountered if only Opus and G.711 were supported.  It therefore
   advocates for the addition of other codecs while addressing concerns
   raised against such support.

   In section 5, a way forward is proposed that intends to be a real
   compromise taking into consideration the concerns expressed against
   additional codecs.  It is especially recognized that unjustified
   additional costs on browsers must be avoided.  Therefore the proposed
   solution intends to strongly limit the cost and technical impact on
   browsers for the support of additional codecs (including license
   costs) while improving interoperability with legacy systems.

   Regarding audio codecs, it is a common misconception that other
   existing voice networks only support G.711.  Actually existing
   networks use circuit switched networks as well as voice-over-IP
   networks like H.323 and SIP-based networks, which means that audio
   codecs are not limited to G.711.  For instance, from use cases
   described in [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-se-ucases-and-requirements], it can be
   foreseen that interoperability with mobile telephony systems will
   often happen.  In such mobile systems, the UE must support the
   Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) speech codec, and if wideband speech
   communication is offered, the UE must support AMR wideband (AMR-WB)
   codec.  An increasing number of customers are now experiencing high
   quality voice with HD Voice services over mobile, fixed networks or
   over the internet.  For those customers, any fall back to the G.711
   narrow band quality for interoperability purpose could be perceived
   as a strong and unacceptable quality degradation.  Support of G.711
   as the only codec for legacy interoperability purposes is currently



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   not sufficient.


2.  Terminology

   In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
   and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119
   [RFC2119].


3.  Definitions

   Legacy networks: In this draft, legacy networks encompass the
   conversational networks that are already deployed like the PSTN, the
   PLMN, the IMS, H.323 networks.


4.  Use cases

4.1.  AMR-WB

4.1.1.  Use case

   The market of voice personal communication is driven by mobile
   terminals and WebRTC technology is expected to be increasingly used
   on smartphones.  Furthermore "HD voice" is gaining momentum and more
   and more personal communication devices will support wideband
   communications.  Customers are now getting used to the high quality
   offered by HD Voice mobile devices, CAT-iq fixed HD devices and
   eventually, HD Voice via WebRTC and OPUS over the internet.

   Hence, many communications are expected to be held between a user of
   a WebRTC endpoint on a device integrating an AMR-WB module who wants
   to communicate with another user that can only be reached on a mobile
   device that only supports AMR-WB (and AMR); both endpoints support HD
   voice quality.

4.1.2.  Problem

   For this use case, the best situation will be to have the AMR-WB
   supported by both sides of the connection.  Indeed, as mentioned in
   the introduction, AMR-WB is specified by 3GPP as the mandatory codec
   to be supported by wideband mobile terminals for a wide range of
   communication services as described in [AMR-WB].  This includes the
   massively deployed circuit switched mobile telephony services and new
   multimedia telephony services over IP/IMS and 4G/VoLTE as specified
   by GSMA as voice IMS profile for VoLTE in IR92.  Hence, AMR-WB is



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   strongly increasing with deployment in more than 60 networks from 45
   countries and more than 130 types of terminals (c.f.
   [Information-Papers]).

   In that use case, if OPUS and G.711 remain the only codecs supported
   by the WebRTC endpoints, a gateway must then transcode these codecs
   into AMR-WB, and vice-versa, in order to implement the use-case.  As
   a consequence, a high number of calls are likely to be affected by
   transcoding operations producing a degradation of the user quality
   experience for many customers.  This will have a very significant
   business impact for all service providers on both sides, not only
   with respect to the transcoding costs but mainly with respect to user
   experience degradation.

   The drawbacks of transcoding are recalled below:

   o  Cost issues: transcoding places important additional costs on
      network gateways for example codec implementation and license
      costs, deployments costs, testing/validation costs etc...  However
      these costs can be seen as just transferred from the terminal side
      to the network side.  The real issue is rather the degradation of
      the quality of service affecting the end user perceived quality
      which will be harmful to all concerned service providers.

   o  Intrinsic quality degradation: Subjective test results show that
      intrinsic voice quality is significantly degraded by transcoding.
      The degradation is around 0.2 to 0.3 MOS for most of transcoding
      use cases with AMR-WB at 12.65 kbit/s.  It should be stressed that
      if transcoding is performed between AMR-WB and G.711, wideband
      voice quality will be lost.  Such bandwidth reduction effect
      clearly degrades the user perceived quality of service leading to
      shorter and less frequent calls (see ref_gsma).  Such a switch to
      G.711 will not be accepted anymore by customers.  If transcoding
      is performed between AMR-WB and OPUS, wideband communication could
      be maintained.  However, as the WB codecs complexity is higher
      than NB codecs complexity, such WB transcoding is also more costly
      and degrades the quality: MOS scores of transcoding between AMR-WB
      12.65kbit/s and OPUS at 16 kbit/s in both directions are
      significantly lower than those of AMR-WB at 12.65kbit/s or OPUS at
      16 kbit/s.  Furthermore, in degraded conditions, the addition of
      defects, like audio artifacts due to packet losses, and the audio
      effects resulting from the cascading of different packet loss
      recovery algorithms may result in a quality below the acceptable
      limit for the customers.

   o  Degraded interactivity due to increased latency: Transcoding means
      full de-packetization for decoding of the media stream (including
      mechanisms of de-jitter buffering and packet loss recovery) then



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      re-encoding, re-packetization and re-sending.  The delays produced
      by all these operations are additive and may increase the end to
      end delay beyond acceptable limits like with more than 1s end to
      end latency.


   In addition to these drawbacks related to transcoding, the following
   issue must be considered:

   o  Efficiency over mobile radio access: AMR-WB has been designed and
      extensively tested for optimized and robust usage over mobile
      radio access which results in enhanced capacity and efficiency.
      The mobile radio bearer is optimized for such a codec with channel
      coding protecting its most sensitive bits.  Furthermore, AMR-WB is
      more efficient than OPUS at regular bit rates used for mobile
      communication of 12.65 kbit/s with fall back modes down to 6.6
      kbit/s.  Finally, hardware optimized implementation may allow for
      less battery consumption

   As a consequence, re-using AMR-WB would be beneficial for the
   specific usage of WebRTC technology over mobile networks.  With the
   strong increase of the smartphone market the capability to use such a
   mobile codec could strongly enforce and extend the market penetration
   of the Web RTC technology.

4.1.3.  Concerns from the browser manufacturers

   The browser manufacturers are concerned by the additional costs that
   the implementation of AMR-WB would put on browsers which include
   integration and test costs and codec license costs.  The proposed way
   forward in Section 5 takes carefully into account this concern.

4.2.  AMR

4.2.1.  Use case

   A user of a WebRTC endpoint on a device integrating an AMR module
   wants to communicate with another user that can only be reached on a
   mobile device that only supports AMR.  Although more and more
   terminal devices are now "HD voice" and support AMR-WB a high number
   of legacy terminals supporting only AMR (terminals with no wideband /
   HD Voice capabilities) are still used.

4.2.2.  Problem

   For this use case, the best solution will be to have the AMR
   supported by both sides of the connection.  Indeed, AMR is specified
   by 3GPP as the mandatory codec to be supported by any mobile terminal



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   for a wide range of communication services.  This includes the
   massively deployed circuit switched mobile telephony services and new
   multimedia telephony services over IP/IMS and 4G/VoLTE as specified
   by GSMA as voice IMS profile for VoLTE in IR92.  Hundreds of millions
   of terminals are consequently currently supporting AMR and are not
   supporting OPUS nor G.711.

   In that use case, if OPUS and G.711 remain the only codecs supported
   by the WebRTC endpoints the same problem as described in 4.1.1 will
   be experienced because of transcoding impacts (costs, quality
   degradation and increased latency) and lower efficiency over mobile
   radio access.

   As a consequence, re-using AMR would be beneficial for the specific
   usage of WebRTC technology over mobile networks.  With the strong
   increase of the smartphone market the capability to use such a mobile
   codec could strongly enforce and extend the market penetration of the
   Web RTC technology.

4.2.3.  Concerns from the browser manufacturers

   Same as in Section 4.1.3.

4.3.  G.722

4.3.1.  Use case

   As mentioned in Section 4.1.1, HD Voice is gaining momentum and more
   and more personal communication devices support wideband
   communications.  Customers get used to high quality voice and WebRTC
   aims at providing high voice quality over internet.  In this use
   case, a user of a WebRTC endpoint on a device integrating G.722
   module wants to communicate with another user that can only be
   reached on a device that only supports G.722 as a wideband codec,
   G.722 being specified by ETSI as the mandatory wideband codec for New
   Generation DECT (e.g.  CAT-iq compliant).

4.3.2.  Problem

   For this use case, the best solution will be to have the G.722
   supported by both sides of the connection.

   Indeed, G.722 has been chosen by ETSI DECT to greatly increase the
   voice quality by extending the bandwidth from narrow band to
   wideband.  Besides providing high wideband quality, it has low
   complexity and very low delay.  It is widely used in HD fixed
   services in both hard and soft endpoints.




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   In this use case, if OPUS and G.711 remain the only codecs supported
   by the WebRTC endpoints, a gateway must then transcode them from and
   into G.722 in order to implement the use-case.  As in Section 4.1.2,
   it should be stressed that if transcoding is performed between G.722
   and G.711, wideband quality will be lost with fall back to narrow
   band.  This will be perceived as a strong and unacceptable quality
   degradation by customers experiencing more and more wideband voice
   calls.  It is also important to recall that wideband audio can help
   persons with hearing impairments to use voice communication over
   distance and drafts regulations dealing with this requires wide band
   audio wherever there is voice communication pointing at G.722 as the
   common codec at least to assure interoperability with wide-band audio
   between providers.

   On the other hand, transcoding with OPUS will greatly increase the
   complexity, now, as mentioned above, G.722 low complexity was a key
   factor in many applications mandating G.722.

4.3.3.  Concerns from the browser manufacturers

   Unlike AMR and AMR-WB, G.722, as G.711, is royalty free.  Some
   concerns about the availability of G.722 PLC were raised.  Indeed
   G.722 and G.711 were initially designed without Packet Loss
   Concealment (PLC); nevertheless, ITU-T did standardize such
   functionality as appendices to these recommendations to extend the
   capabilities of current systems to support new applications and to
   follow the market demand (for instance when these standards have been
   widely used in VoIP applications).  It has been argued that, unlike
   the main recommendations, there are non-RF IPR declarations for these
   PLC appendices (G.711 Appendix I, G.722 Appendices III and IV).  It
   should be recalled that these appendices are only examples and
   implementers are free to use any PLC solution.  For instance in the
   G.722 case, there are publicly available PLC in the ITU-T Software
   Tool Library.


5.  The proposed way-forward

   It is proposed that the browser manufacturers re-use AMR, AMR-WB and
   G.722 codecs whenever they are already supported on the device on
   which the browsers are implemented.

   AMR and AMR-WB are already supported by millions of devices with
   license costs and technical costs (implementation, tests...) already
   paid for these codecs optimized for mobile usage.

   Android now provides the APIs needed to give access to all the voice
   and audio features implemented on the hardware that are required to



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   develop a voice service.  This especially includes AMR and AMR-WB
   encoding and decoding, adaptive gain control, echo cancellation and
   noise reduction.

   It is therefore technically feasible that browsers offer AMR and
   AMR-WB as additional RTC Web codecs without re-implementing these
   codecs and so with very limited additional costs:

   o  For implementation, no codec software code has to be developed,
      tested or integrated directly in the browser (neither for the
      encoding/decoding nor for related audio functions).

   o  For licensing, fees are already paid for the hardware
      implementation.  Since no additional codec is implemented on the
      device with only one active voice call using the codec at a time
      it cannot be argued that additional license fees have to be paid
      in that case.  However, in order to fully guarantee this, it is
      made explicit in the proposed text that the support of AMR and
      AMR-WB is conditional on the fact that no additional license fee
      is required.

   This proposed way forward is expected to be a good compromise
   beneficial to all parties.  It will optimize the user experience with
   limited additional costs: excluding high costs for networks to
   support transcoding and high additional costs on browsers to support
   additional codecs.

   It is consequently proposed the following wording to be added to
   Section 3 (codec requirements) of [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-audio-codecs]:

      3.  Audio Codecs

      3.1.  Required Codecs

      To ensure a baseline level of interoperability between WebRTC
      clients, a minimum set of required codecs are specified below.

      WebRTC clients are REQUIRED to implement the following audio
      codecs.
      *  Opus [RFC6716], with any ptime value up to 120 ms
      *  G.711 PCMA and PCMU with one channel, a rate of 8000 Hz and a
         ptime of 20 - see section 4.5.14 of [RFC3551]
      *  Telephone Event - [RFC4733]

      3.2.  Additional Codecs






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      To ensure an enhanced level of interoperability between WebRTC
      clients, AMR-WB, AMR and G.722 codecs SHOULD be implemented by
      WebRTC end-points to avoid transcoding costs and quality
      degradations towards legacy fixed and mobile devices and allow
      interworking with enhanced voice quality (rather than fall back to
      G.711 narrow band voice).

      WebRTC browsers on devices for which the implementation of AMR is
      mandatory for voice services MUST allow AMR to be negotiated and
      used at WebRTC level provided it is ensured that no additional
      license fees are required.

      WebRTC browsers on wide-band devices for which the implementation
      of AMR-WB is mandatory for voice services MUST allow AMR-WB to be
      negotiated and used at WebRTC level provided it is ensured that no
      additional license fees are required.

      WebRTC browsers devices for which the implementation of G.722 is
      mandatory for voice services MUST allow G.722 to be negotiated and
      used at WebRTC level.


   Note: the wording of section "3.2.  Additional Codecs" is a first
   proposal and example to try to capture the general principle
   explained in this document to improve interoperability while limiting
   the cost impact on browsers.  It is subject to further modifications
   to reach the best possible compromise.


6.  Security Considerations


7.  IANA Considerations

   None.


8.  Acknowledgements

   Thanks to Milan Patel for his review.


9.  References

9.1.  Normative references

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.



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   [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

9.2.  Informative references

   [AMR-WB]   GSMA, "AMR-WB", 2011.

   [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-audio]
              Valin, J. and C. Bran, "WebRTC Audio Codec and Processing
              Requirements", draft-ietf-rtcweb-audio-01 (work in
              progress), November 2012.

   [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-overview]
              Alvestrand, H., "Overview: Real Time Protocols for Brower-
              based Applications", draft-ietf-rtcweb-overview-06 (work
              in progress), February 2013.

   [I-D.ietf-rtcweb-use-cases-and-requirements]
              Holmberg, C., Hakansson, S., and G. Eriksson, "Web Real-
              Time Communication Use-cases and Requirements",
              draft-ietf-rtcweb-use-cases-and-requirements-10 (work in
              progress), December 2012.

   [Information-Papers]
              GSMA, "Information Papers", 2013.


Authors' Addresses

   Xavier Marjou
   France Telecom Orange
   2, avenue Pierre Marzin
   Lannion  22307
   France

   Email: xavier.marjou@orange.com


   Stephane Proust
   France Telecom Orange
   2, avenue Pierre Marzin
   Lannion  22307
   France

   Email: stephane.proust@orange.com





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   Kalyani Bogineni
   Verizon Wireless

   Email: Kalyani.Bogineni@VerizonWireless.com


   Roland Jesske
   Deutsche Telekom AG

   Email: R.Jesske@telekom.de


   Bernhard Feiten
   Deutsche Telekom AG

   Email: R.Jesske@telekom.de


   Lei Miao
   Huawei

   Email: lei.miao@huawei.com


   Marocco
   Telecom Italia

   Email: enrico.marocco@telecomitalia.it


   Espen Berger
   Cisco

   Email: espeberg@cisco.com

















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