HelloSoft will demonstrate a VoIP phone reference design running on an ARM DSP-enhanced RISC CPU core at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco this week. The reference design software is said to implement a complete IP phone suite, including voice codec and protocols, running on an embedded Linux operating system. The hardware on which the reference design is based is the ARM “Integrator” reference platform equipped with ARM's 32-bit ARM926EJ-S core. The demo will take place in ARM's booth.

According to HelloSoft, VoIP phone designs typically use two processors, a RISC CPU and a DSP — the embedded OS and communications stacks run on the RISC core, while the audio codecs (encoder/decoder protocols) run on the DSP. Having a single processor with DSP enhancements eliminates the cost and overhead of multiple memories, peripherals, and processor buses, not to mention the development time and cost of creating and maintaining code for multiple processors architectures, HelloSoft noted. In contrast, the ARM/HelloSoft VoIP reference design implements all VoIP functions including codecs, line echo cancellers, telephony components, and telephony signalling stack on a single ARM926EJ-S core running an embedded Linux OS, the company said.

“Integrator” reference board
with plug-in ARM926EJ-S core module

The hardware/software combo of the HelloSoft/ARM VoIP reference design is capable of implementing two voice channels for wired and wireless IP phones, residential gateways, integrated access devices, and other VoIP-enabled devices, the companies said.

HelloSoft said its “HelloVoice” software components provide G.711, G.726 and G.729AB vocoders, G.168-2000 Line Echo Canceller, Voice Activity Detection, Comfort Noise Generation, Jitter Buffer, Packet Loss Concealment, DTMF Tone Detection and Generation, SIP/RTP/RTCP Call Signaling, and Control and multichannel system-level framework.

The VoIP software components will be available by mid-year from HelloSoft, and the “Integrator” reference platform (shown above) used as the hardware platform for the reference design, plus the “fully synthesizable” ARM926EJ-S core, are available now from ARM.

 
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