Subject: MEGACO Requirements for Voice Enabled Gateways

From: "Michael A. Ramalho, Ph.D." <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 10:30:34 -0700

Megacoers,

As the MEGACO requirement document nears last-call, it occurred to me
that Voice Enabled Gateways (VEGs) were not included in the requirements.

A Voice Enabled Gateway (VEG) is a MG that typically utilizes the DSPs in
the gateways to perform particular signal processing related task. For example,
speaker verification, speech/audio recognition and speech/audio feature extraction
can be performed on the DSP resources typically found in MGs. Although VEGs
can be deployed in stand-alone units (as virtually all are today) they can be
implemented a normal voice MG that has VEG capabilities for a subset of its ports.

While Voice Enabled Gateways have some overlap to the IRV system requirements
in Section 11.2.9, they have some additional requirements as well. For example, a
speaker identification task might require the ability to download speaker templates
during mid-call.

I believe that VEGs can easily be handled as an extension of the MEGACO protocol
via a VEG package.

I have suggested the following words for inclusion in the MEGACO requirements
if no one has objection to it's inclusion.

Please feel free to comment on the VEG proposal or to suggest a better description.
I'd like to hear from you.

Regards,

Michael Ramalho

****PROPOSED REQUIREMENTS WORDING********

11.2.X Voice Enabled Gateway (VEG) Support

A Voice Enabled Gateway (VEG) is a MG that utilizes processing resources in the
gateways to perform particular auditory signal processing related tasks. For example,
speaker verification, speech/audio recognition and speech/audio feature extraction can
be performed on the DSP resources typically found in MGs. These specialized signal
processing tasks will likely require application specific programs executing in the MG
and a mechanism for signaling between these programs and other network servers that
support VEGs.

A VEG can be implemented as a normal voice MG that has VEG capabilities for a
subset of its ports (i.e., the VEG should not be thought of as a stand-alone function,
as most IVRs are today). The ability to dynamically download particular parameters
during mid-call is a VEG requirement (e.g., speaker templates for speaker identification).
As some VEGs functions are yet to be deployed or even implemented, a full set of
requirements is not available at this time.

Like the IVR Unit described in Section 11.2.9, it is envisioned that a scripting
requirement for the VEG would involve VEG-controlling extensions to basic scripting
packages.

To support the MGs functioning as VEGs, the protocol must:

a. Allow VEG scripting similar to the scripting requirements of the IVR Unit (Section 11.2.9).

b. Allow download of VEG-specific applications programs.

c. Allow mid-call download of VEG specific parameters.

d. Allow specialized signaling from the VEG applications to the VEG supporting servers.

****END PROPOSED REQUIREMENTS WORDING********
Michael A. Ramalho, Ph.D.
Cisco Systems
Wall Township, NJ
Office email: [email-masked]
Personal email: [email-masked]
Office: +1.732.449.5762
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