WB-AMR Codec Page 1 of 1

WB-AMR Codec
This describes the implementation principles and service flow of wideband extension-adaptive multirate
(WB-AMR) codec.
WB-AMR is the upgrade version of AMR. It also adopts the ACELP technology. In December 2000,
ETSI/3GPP standardized and publicized WB-AMR. ITU-T adopted WB-AMR in 2002 and named it
G.722.2. WB-AMR and AMR are the same in essence. It indicates the first time that the same codec is
used for both mobile and fixed services. It also means that the interworking between 3G networks and IP
fixed networks is much easier. WB-AMR is capable of high voice quality because of its wide voice
bandwidth (50 Hz to 7 kHz). It provides nine types of sampling rates (none of them is stereo): 23.85 kbit/s,
23.05 kbit/s, 19.85 kbit/s, 18.25 kbit/s, 15.85 kbit/s, 14.25 kbit/s, 12.65 kbit/s, 8.85 kbit/s, and 6.6 kbit/s. The
lowest rate to ensure high voice quality is 12.65 kbit/s. WB-AMR is already applied in universal mobile
telecommunications system (UMTS)/International Mobile Telephony (IMT)-2000 radio networks. UMTS6.0,
as the basic codec technology of UMTS/IMT-2000 radio networks, requires that WB-AMR must be
supported. That is, the WB- AMR codec must be applied in the calls of circuit switched (CS) and IP
multimedia subsystem (IMS). Compared with the narrowband extension-AMR (NB-AMR) codec, the WB-
AMR codec takes advantage in voice quality. The WB-AMR codec enables transmission of high-quality
audio signals.
The WB-AMR codec has the following advantages:

High sampling rate, high precision, and high rate of the WB-AMR codec ensure better voice quality
than PSTN G.711.

The WB-AMR codec is applicable to music codec, as well as voice codec.

If both VoIP networks and mobile networks adopt the WB-AMR/G.722.2 codec, interworking between
these two types of networks will be much easier. The number of times of cascading codec is
decreased, the voice quality is improved, and the delay is reduced.

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