Metric for meeting commencement in a voice conferencing system

摘要

A method (400) for determining that an audio conference is in a first phase of a plurality of phases. The method comprises determining (401) a plurality of sequences (301) of events (305) for a plurality of terminals (120, 170); wherein an event from the sequences (301) of events (305) indicates that a talker activity at a terminal (120, 170) has been detected; determining (403) a sequence (350) of feature vectors (330) based on the plurality of sequences (301) of events (305); wherein a feature vector (330) of the sequence (350) of feature vectors (330) is indicative of the talker activity (332) of at least one of the plurality of terminals (120, 170) relative to the talker activity at least another one of the plurality of terminals (120, 170); and determining (406) that the audio conference is in the first phase based on the sequence (350) of feature vectors (330). DETAILS: audio-conference phases identified as: I) introductory phase (comprising a waiting phase, an uncoordinated activity or chatting phase, and a participant introductions/attendance check phase); II) cooperative phase (comprising productive discussions between participants); III) sign-off phase. In addition to participant join/leave/mute events, voice-activity detection algorithms are used for measuring a ratio of voice-activity of each participant (RTT, Relative Talking Time) and other features (CTT, Concurrent Talking Time, NT, number of Turns, NAE, Number of Active Endpoints) and for inferring the current phase of the conference; conference logs or recordings may be used instead of real-time measurements; the time difference (delay) between scheduled time or first call and the reach of phase II is used as a measure of efficiency of the conference.

主权项

1. A method for determining that an audio conference which makes use of an audio conference system is in a first phase of a plurality of pre-determined phases; wherein the audio conference system links a plurality of M terminals, M>2 for participants of the audio conference; the method comprising
determining a plurality of sequences of events for the plurality of terminals of the audio conference system, respectively; wherein an event from the sequences of events indicates that a talker activity at a terminal has been detected within an event time interval; determining a sequence of feature vectors based on the plurality of sequences of events;
wherein a feature vector of the sequence of feature vectors is indicative of the talker activity at one or more of the plurality of terminals relative to the talker activity at all of the plurality of terminals within a feature time interval,wherein a feature vector of the sequence of feature vectors is indicative of a concurrent talker activity at one or more of the plurality of terminals, respectively, within the feature time interval, and/orwherein a feature vector of the sequence of feature vectors is indicative of a number of hand overs of talker activity between different terminals within the feature time interval;wherein the feature time interval comprises a plurality of event time intervals; and determining that the audio conference is in the first phase based on the sequence of feature vectors.