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System Requirement

We recommend to install Integrated communication Platform only on computers with at least following software and hardware.

  Windows 95 operating system

  Sound Cards, Speakers, and microphones

  Basic data/fax modem. You'll need a data modem that supports the Unimodem/V communications driver. Not all modems support Unimodem/V even though they offer voice-mail or telephony features.

Telephony cards (optional) Telephony cards provide a much more advanced set of telephony features than do TAPI-compliant data modems.

Connection to a at least one live telephone line.

A Dial up connection to internet

The system resources are mainly consumed while we are doing speech recognition and/or Text To Speech Synthesis. So in the next few lines we will discuss this issue.

Hardware Requirement for Text to Speech Synthesis and Speech Recognition.

Integrated communication platform can be resource intensive. It is especially important that SR engines have enough RAM and disk space to respond quickly to user requests. Failure to respond quickly results in additional commands spoken into the system. This has the effect of creating a spiraling degradation in performance. The worse things get, the worse things get. It will not  take too much of this before your will decide that our software is more trouble than it's worth!

Our Text-to-speech engines can also tax the system. While TTS engines do not always require a great deal of memory to operate, insufficient processor speed can result in halting or unintelligible playback of text.

For these reasons, it is important to establish clear hardware and software requirements when installing Integrated Communication Platform. User must have all the memory resources and hard disk space needed for proper working of  SR and TTS services. There are three general categories of workstation resources that should be reviewed:

       General hardware, including processor speed and RAM memory

       Software, including operating system and SR/TTS engines

       Special hardware, including sound cards, microphones, speakers, and headphones

The following three sections provide some general guidelines to follow when establishing minimal resource requirements.

General Hardware Requirements

Speech systems can tax processor and RAM resources. SR services require varying levels of resources depending on the type of SR engine installed and the level of services implemented. TTS engine requirements are rather stable, but also depend on the TTS engine installed.

 SR and TTS engines currently available with our application can be successfully installed on systems with  486/33 processor chip and an additional 1MB of RAM. However, overall PC performance with this configuration is pretty poor and is not recommended.

A good suggested processor is a Pentium processor (P60 or better) with at least 16MB of total RAM. Systems that will be supporting dictation SR services require the most computational power. It is not unreasonable to expect the workstation to use 32MB of RAM and a P100 or higher processor. Obviously, the more resources, the better the performance.

 

SR Processor and Memory Requirements

In general, SR systems that implement command and control services will only need an additional 1MB of RAM (not counting the application's RAM requirement). Dictation services should get at least another 8MB of RAM-preferably more. The type of speech sampling, analysis, and size of recognition vocabulary all affect the minimal resource requirements. Table shows published minimal processor and RAM requirements of speech recognition services.

Table.

Published minimal processor and RAM requirements of SR services.

Levels of Speech-Recognition Services

Minimal Processor

Minimal Additional RAM

Discrete, speaker-dependent, whole word, small vocabulary

386/16

64K

Discrete, speaker-independent, whole word, small vocabulary

386/33

256K

Continuous, speaker-independent, sub-word, small vocabulary

486/33

1MB

Discrete, speaker-dependent, whole word, large vocabulary

Pentium

8MB

Continuous, speaker-independent, sub-word, large vocabulary

RISC processor

8MB

 

These memory requirements are in addition to the requirements of the operating system and any loaded applications. The minimal Windows 95 memory model should be 12MB. Recommended RAM is 16MB and 24MB is preferred. The minimal NT memory should be 16MB with 24MB recommended and 32MB preferred.

TTS Processor and Memory Requirements

TTS engines do not place as much of a demand on workstation resources as SR engines. Usually TTS services only require a 486/33 processor and only 1MB of additional RAM. However, the grammar and prosody rules can demand as much as another 1MB due to the complexity of the language being spoken. It is interesting to note that probably the most complex and demanding language for TTS processing is English. This is primarily due to the irregular spelling patterns of the language.

Most TTS engines used speech synthesis to produce the audio output. However, but advanced systems can use diphone concatenation. Since diphone-based systems rely on a set of actual voice samples for reproducing written text, these systems can require an additional 1MB of RAM. To be safe, it is a good idea to suggest a requirement of 2MB of additional RAM, with a recommendation of 4MB for advanced TTS systems.

Software Requirements-Operating Systems and Speech Engines

The general software requirements are rather simple. The Microsoft Speech API is implemented on Windows 32-bit operating systems. This means user will need Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.5 or greater on the workstation.

The most important software requirements for implementing speech services are the SR and TTS engines. An SR/TTS engine is the back-end-processing module. Our application is the front end, and the SPEECH.DLL acts as the broker between the two processes.

We along with our application software included a bundle of text to speech engines and speech recognition engines. So user don’t need any of the additional engines.

Sound Cards, Microphones, and Speakers

Complete speech-capable workstations need three additional pieces of hardware:

       A sound card for audio reproduction

       Speakers for audio playback

       A microphone for audio input

Just about any sound card can support SR/TTS engines. Any of the major vendors' cards are acceptable, including Sound Blaster and its compatibles, Media Vision, ESS technology, and others. Any card that is compatible with Microsoft's Windows Sound System is also acceptable.

A few speech-recognition engines still need a DSP (digital signal processor) card. While it may be preferable to work with newer cards that do not require DSP handling, there are advantages to using DSP technology. DSP cards handle some of the computational work of interpreting speech input. This can actually reduce the resource requirements for providing SR services. In systems where speech is a vital source of process input, DSP cards can noticeably boost performance.

SR engines require the use of a microphone for audio input. This is usually handled by a directional microphone mounted on the PC base. Other options include the use of a lavaliere microphone draped around the neck, or a headset microphone that includes headphones. Depending on the audio card installed, user may also be able to use a telephone handset for input.

Most multimedia systems ship with a suitable microphone built into the PC or as an external device that plugs into the sound card. It is also possible to purchase high-grade unidirectional microphones from audio retailers. Depending on the microphone and the sound card used, you may need an amplifier to boost the input to levels usable by the SR engine.

The quality of the audio input is one of the most important factors in successful implementation of speech services on a PC. If the system will be used in a noisy environment, close-talk microphones should be used. This will reduce extraneous noise and improve the recognition capabilities of the SR engine.

Speakers or headphones are needed to play back TTS output. In private office spaces, free-standing speakers provide the best sound reproduction and fewest dangers of ear damage through high-levels of playback. However, in larger offices, or in areas where the playback can disturb others, headphones are preferred.

Modem and Telephony card issues

Basic data modems can support Assisted Telephony services (outbound dialing) and usually are able to support only limited inbound call handling.

Voice-data modems are a new breed of low-cost modems that provide additional features that come close to that of the higher-priced telephony cards. These modems usually are capable of supporting the Basic Telephony services and many of the Supplemental services. The key to success with voice-data modems is getting a good service provider interface for your card. We recommend Voice-data modem for our application.

Finally, telephony cards offer the greatest level of service compatibility. Telephony cards usually support all of the Basic Telephony and all of the Supplemental Telephony services, including phone device control. Most telephony cards also offer multiple lines on a single card. This makes them ideal for supporting commercial-grade telephony applications.

 

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