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47-754: The initial MELP was invented by Alan McCree around 1995 while a graduate student at the Center for Signal and Image Processing (CSIP) at Georgia Tech, and the original MELP related patents have expired by now. That initial speech coder was standardized in 1997 and was known as MIL-STD-3005. It surpassed other candidate vocoders in the US DoD competition, including: (a) Frequency Selective Harmonic Coder (FSHC), (b) Advanced Multi-Band Excitation (AMBE), (c) Enhanced Multiband Excitation (EMBE), (d) Sinusoid Transform Coder (STC), and (e) Subband LPC Coder (SBC). Due to its lower complexity than Waveform Interpolative (WI) coder,

94-761: A 50-50 joint venture with the global French defense contractor. The joint venture, based in South Korea , would be led by a CEO appointed by Samsung Electronics and will take over the entire defense business that Samsung Electronics has been conducting, which employed 697 people and generated sales of KRW 163.1 billion (US$ 134.5 million) the previous year. The new company would now market Samsung Electronics' defense communication equipment, satellite communication systems and terminals , fire control systems , radar guidance equipment including detection and tracking devices, and gunner's sights; and would begin overseas exports through Thomson's sales network. Samsung stated that

141-401: A 64 kbit/s μ-Law G.711 datastream, discounting the effects of protocol overhead: Generally, speech coding involves a trade-off of different aspects including bit-rate, speech quality, delay (frame size and lookahead), computational complexity, robustness to different speakers and languages, robustness to different background noises, channel error robustness, and also codec state recovery in

188-452: A communication audit highlighted Thomson-CSF's unfavorable public image, particularly among the young French graduates it sought to recruit. The new name was also meant to facilitate the company's worldwide expansion. Thales is partially owned by the French state and operates in more than 56 countries. In 2019 it had 80,000 employees and generated €18.4 billion in revenue. As of 2017, it

235-486: A continuous basis. This has resulted in an open source codec that has progressively increased its robustness and performance – when subjected to some of the most challenging RF and acoustic environments. Thales Group Thales S.A. , trading as Thales Group ( French pronunciation: [talɛs] ) is a French multinational corporation specialized in the design, development, manufacturing and support of electronic systems as well as devices and equipment for

282-522: A licensing fee is due for most codecs, DVSI does not disclose software licensing terms. Anecdotal evidence suggests that licensing fee begin from between $ 100,000 to $ 1 million. For purposes of comparison, licensing fees for use of the MP3 standard started at $ 15,000. For small-scale use and prototyping, the only option is to purchase a dedicated hardware IC from DVSI. These ICs can be purchased for less than $ 100 in small quantities. DSP Innovations Inc. offers

329-578: A major manufacturer of military equipment such as smokeless gunpowder and the Bushmaster IMV . In April 2006, Thales announced it would acquire Alcatel 's space business (67% of Alcatel Alenia Space and 33% of Telespazio ) and Alcatel's Rail Signalling Solutions division, in a deal which raised Alcatel's ownership of Thales to 21.66 percent. The French government would also decrease its ownership in Thales to 27.1 percent from 31.3 percent as part of

376-643: A new 600 bit/s rate MELPe variation by Thales Group ( France ) was added (without extensive competition and testing as performed for the 2400/1200 bit/s MELPe) to the NATO standard STANAG-4591. In 2010, MIT Lincoln Labs, Compandent , BBN, and General Dynamics also developed for DARPA a 300 bit/s MELP device . Its quality was better than the 600 bit/s MELPe, but its algorithmic delay was longer. The MELPe has been implemented in many applications including secure radio devices, satellite communications, VoIP, and cellphone applications. In such applications, additional expertise

423-544: A part of MELPe-based projects performed for NSA and NATO , provided NSA and NATO with special test-bed platform known as MELCODER device that provided the golden reference for real-time implementation of MELPe. The low-cost FLEXI-232 Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) made by Compandent , which are based on the MELCODER golden reference, are very popular and widely used for evaluating and testing MELPe in real-time, various channels & networks, and field conditions. In 2005,

470-774: A range of short-range missile systems such as the Starstreak surface-to-air missile or Lightweight Multi-role Missile (LMM). In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine , major arms manufacturers, including Thales, reported a sharp increase in interim sales and profits. The Thales ATM (Air Traffic Management) solution is marketed under the name "TopSky", previously named "EuroCat". Thales supplies avionics to civil aircraft manufacturers, including Fly-By-Wire systems, cockpit systems, navigation computers, satellite communication, inflight entertainment and electrical systems. The coordination of Thales parts' servicing and maintenance

517-475: A software implementation of APCO P25 Phase 1 (Full-Rate) and Phase 2 (Half-Rate) codecs as well as DMR and dPMR codecs. A technology licence from DVSI is required. The patent for IMBE has expired. Codec2 is an open source alternative which uses half of the bandwidth of AMBE to encode speech of similar quality, created by David Rowe and lobbied by Bruce Perens . Codec2 still continues to evolve, with additional "modes" being developed, refined and made available on

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564-786: A subsidiary of Thales, and Dominique Monleau alleged that Thales has a centralised slush fund that it uses to bribe officials. On 30 May 2005 Schabir Shaik , the financial advisor to Jacob Zuma , the deputy president of the African National Congress party, was found guilty by the High Court in Durban of organising a bribe on behalf of Thomson-CSF . On 22 January 2020, the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg ruled that both

611-420: Is a codebook -based vocoder that operates at bitrates of between 2 and 9.6 kbit/s, and at a sampling rate of 8 kHz in 20-ms frames. The audio data is usually combined with up to 7 bit/s of forward error correction data, producing a total RF bandwidth of approximately 2,250 Hz (compared to 2,700–3,000 Hz for an analogue single sideband transmission). Lost frames can be masked by using

658-616: Is a series of proprietary speech coding standards developed by Digital Voice Systems, Inc. (DVSI). In 1967 Osamu Fujimura ( MIT ) showed basic advantages of the multi-band representation of speech ("An Approximation to Voice Aperiodicity", IEEE 1968). This work gave a start to development of the "multi-band excitation" method of speech coding, that was patented in 1997 (now expired) by founders of DVSI as "Multi-Band Excitation" (MBE). All consequent improvements known as Improved Multi-Band Excitation (IMBE), Advanced Multiband Excitation (AMBE), AMBE+ and AMBE+2 are based on this MBE method. AMBE

705-407: Is coordinated by its MRO division; OEMServices , which handles the repair flow for component maintenance support. In November 2017, Thales acquired a UK radar provider called Aveillant which produces software-defined holographic radar technology, which can detect small targets such as drones. In February 2018, Thales won on a A$ 1.2 billion ($ 946 million) contract with Airservices Australia and

752-593: Is involved in the construction of both the Horizon and FREMM programs. Thales, as Thomson-CSF, was involved in the Taiwan frigates scandal , relating to the sale of La Fayette -class frigates to Taiwan. It is also present in Eurosam as Thomson-CSF was a founder of the consortium along with Aérospatiale and Alenia Aeronautica . In February 2004, Thales was awarded a contract for a new command and control system for

799-480: Is required for combating channel errors, packet loss, and synchronization loss. Such expertise requires the understanding of the MELPe's bits sensitivity to errors. The 2400 bit/s and 1200 bit/s MELPe include synchronization bit, which is useful in serial communications. MELPe is intended for the compression of speech. Given an audio input sampled at 8 kHz, the MELPe codec yields the following compression ratios over

846-1028: Is stated to be launched in 2023. In Turkey, the Thales team delivered the first High Speed Line in the country in 2009, and has completed more than 400 km (250 mi) of the Ankara Istanbul High Speed Line. Effective 31 May 2024, the ground transportation division was sold off to Hitachi Rail . The deal was made at $ 2.5 billion. Thales is also a major manufacturer of in-flight entertainment systems on board airliners. Thales' primary competitors in this area of business include Panasonic Avionics Corporation and Rockwell Collins . Thales also produces and installs ticketing and communications systems for public transportation via its ticketing and revenue collection division. In November 2016, Thales announced its intention to divest from its transport ticketing, revenue collection, road toll and car park management business. The company entered into negotiations with Paris-based Latour Capital, but

893-629: The Australian Department of Defence to unify Australia's civil and military airspace under a single air traffic control system , named "OneSKY". Thales has major involvement in the UK rail industry as a result of the Racal merger and the 2006 acquisition of Alcatel's Rail Signalling Solutions division and transport business. Thales is to modernize 40 per cent of London Tube network London Underground . In Denmark, Thales now owns 100% of

940-507: The aerospace , defence , security and transportation sectors. The company is headquartered in Paris ' business district, La Défense , and its stock is listed on Euronext Paris . The company was previously known as Thomson-CSF since its foundation in 1968. It was rebranded Thales (named after the Greek philosopher Thales [talɛs] pronounced as in French ) in 2000, after

987-559: The "East-west Consortium" contracted for a nationwide travel card (Danish: " Rejsekort "). In India, Thales was selected in December 2014 by the New Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to deliver a completely automatic fare collection system, as well as ticketing equipment. Thales has also been contracted by Hyderabad Metro Rail since 2017 to provide train control automation and communication services for

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1034-566: The 2400 and 1200 bit/s US DoD MELPe was adopted also as NATO standard, known as STANAG -4591. The NATO testing performance measurements included voice intelligibility, voice quality, speaker recognition, language dependency, speaker dependency, 10 acoustic noise environments, transmission channel under 1% BER, tandem using 16 kbit/s CVSD vocoder, whispered speech, and real-time implementation. The testing data included Over 36,000 files, or 500 hours of speech under various conditions and languages. As part of NATO testing for new NATO standard, MELPe

1081-422: The 2400 bit/s and 1200 bit/s bitstreams, and (f) new postfilter. This fairly significant development was aimed to create a new coder at half the rate and have it interoperable with the old MELP standard. This enhanced-MELP (also known as MELPe) was adopted as the new MIL-STD-3005 in 2001 in form of annexes and supplements made to the original MIL-STD-3005, enabling the same quality as the old 2400 bit/s MELP's at half

1128-614: The AMBE+2 codec, while older Phase 1 radios such as the Motorola XTL and XTS series use the earlier IMBE codec. Newer Phase 1 capable radios such as the APX series radios use the AMBE+2 codec, which is backwards compatible with Phase 1. Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) and Motorola's MOTOTRBO use the AMBE+2 codec. Use of the AMBE standard requires a license from Digital Voice Systems, Inc. While

1175-876: The EU-supported projects Thales participates in are: The company's design won the competition for the Royal Navy Future Carrier (CVF) . It is part of the AirTanker consortium, the winning bid for the RAF's Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft . Thales UK won the contract for the British Army UAV programme, Watchkeeper . It also produces the SWARM remote weapon station . Thales simulators include full motion devices as well as flat panels and other training facilities. Thales Air Defence produces

1222-665: The French Navy, the SIC 21, that will be fitted on the Charles de Gaulle, many vessels and shore locations. Additionally, the initially planned French aircraft carrier PA2 involved Thales as the main designer of the ship. However, the project was cancelled in 2013. Thales is also working on X-ray imaging, finances, energy and operating commercial satellites. By 2012, the company is mainly composed of five branches: Defense, Security, Space, Aerospace and Ground transportation. Among

1269-740: The MELP vocoder won the DoD competition and was selected for MIL-STD -3005. Between 1998 and 2001, a new MELP-based vocoder was created at half the rate (i.e. 1200 bit/s), and substantial enhancements were added to the MIL-STD-3005 by SignalCom (later acquired by Microsoft ), Compandent , and AT&T Corporation , which included (a) additional new vocoder at half the rate (i.e. 1200 bit/s), (b) substantially improved encoding (analysis), (c) substantially improved decoding (synthesis), (d) Noise-Preprocessing for removing background noise, (e) transcoding between

1316-584: The Thales Group and Zuma could be criminally tried for alleged illegal arms dealings which Thales was allowed to undergo in South Africa. Zuma is said to have allowed these illegal Thales arms dealings when he was the nation's deputy president and is also believed to have partaken in them as well. On 10 June 2011, Thales Group and the French government were ordered to pay 630 million euros (almost

1363-461: The UK (largely as a result of the Racal acquisition) has resulted in several high-profile contracts. Thales has offices in: As of June 2024, Thales' major shareholders are the French state (26.06%) and Dassault Aviation (26.05%). A High Court case decided in 2012 between Thales (supplier of Greater Manchester's tram management system) and Transport for Greater Manchester (TGM) considered

1410-651: The acquisition. The deal would also include the Systems Integration activities (those not dedicated to telecoms operators, and covering mainly the transport and energy sectors). In January 2007, the 1.7 billion Euro deal ($ 2.24 billion) was approved. In 2008, Thales acquired British Hardware security module vendor nCipher. In December 2008, Alcatel agreed to sell a 20.8% stake in French engineering group Thales SA to Dassault Aviation SA for €1.57 billion ($ 2.27 billion). In 2014, Alcatel-Lucent initiated talks to sell its cybersecurity unit to Thales. The deal

1457-567: The competition for the Royal Navy Future Carrier (CVF) , and the company now participates in an alliance company with BAE Systems and the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence . Thales Navigation, a division that produced satellite navigation units, was sold to private equity group Shah Capital Partners in 2006 for $ 170 million and renamed Magellan . In 2006, Thales acquired Australian Defence Industries ,

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1504-709: The face of packet loss. Since the MELPe's lower rates (600 and 1200 bit/s) are supersets of the 2400 bit/s rate, the algorithm complexity (e.g. in MIPS) is about the same for all rates. The lower rates use increased frames and lookahead, as well as codebook size, therefore they require more memory. MELPe (and/or its derivatives) is subject to IPR licensing from the following companies, Texas Instruments (2400 bit/s MELP algorithm / source code), Microsoft (1200 bit/s transcoder), Thales Group (600 bit/s rate), Compandent , and AT&T (Noise Pre-Processor NPP). Advanced Multi-Band Excitation Multi-Band Excitation ( MBE )

1551-505: The joint venture company Armaris with the French shipbuilder DCN to offer a total "bottom up" shipbuilding capability. Also in 2002, Thales Broadcast Multimedia, a former subsidiary of Thales, provided China with standard short-wave radio-broadcasting equipment designed for general public radio broadcasting . Though the contract was not for this purpose, it later appeared that China used these ALLISS antennas for jamming foreign radio broadcasts to China. In 2003, Thales UK's design won

1598-460: The metro in Hyderabad . In 2014, the company was tasked with equipping the public transport system of Bordeaux , France, with a contactless ticketing and revenue collection system, to be installed by February 2017. However, due to delays, the system is not expected to be operational until 2019. In Singapore, Thales was involved in a train collision resulting from a compatibility issue between

1645-418: The negotiations ended in 2017 after Latour Capital announced this business was "not aligned closely enough with its investment priorities." After subsequent talks with Chinese investors failed, Thales abandoned the divestment. Thales' international subsidiaries generated 52% of the company's revenue in 2008, with Thales UK being the largest of these accounting for 13% of group revenue. Its large presence in

1692-624: The old signalling system's interface, and the new one. The accident resulted in 38 minor injuries. A similar incident would occur in March 2019 in Hong Kong on the Tsuen Wan line . In Vietnam, the company was awarded a €265 million contract in 2017 to deliver the telecommunications system for the currently constructed Line 3 of the Hanoi metro. Running behind schedule by one year, the metro line

1739-509: The openness of amateur radio, as well as usage restriction for being "undisclosed digital code" under FCC rule 97.309(b) and similar national legislation. System Fusion , open specification from Yaesu , also uses AMBE codec with C4FM modulation. The NXDN digital voice and data protocol uses the AMBE+2 codec. NXDN is implemented by Icom in the IDAS system and by Kenwood as NEXEDGE. APCO Project 25 Phase 2 trunked radio systems also use

1786-469: The operation of an audit clause in a contract, and the extent to which a supplier must comply with this. Thales had submitted claims for increased costs and for extensions to the time allowed for delivery of the system. TGM made various requests for documents intended to better help assess their claims. The Court instructed Thales to supply the requested documents. Although the ticketing system in Bordeaux

1833-543: The parameters of the previous frame to fill in the gap. AMBE is used by the Inmarsat and Iridium satellite telephony systems and certain channels on XM Satellite Radio and is the speech coder for OpenSky Trunked radio systems . AMBE is used in D-STAR amateur radio digital voice communications. It has met criticism from the amateur radio community because the nature of its patent and licensing runs counter to

1880-425: The quality of all old secure voice standards (CVSD, CELP and LPC-10e ). The NATO competition concluded that MELPe substantially improved performance (in terms of speech quality, intelligibility, and noise immunity), while reducing throughput requirements. The NATO testing also included interoperability tests, used over 200 hours of speech data, and was conducted by 3 test laboratories worldwide. Compandent Inc, as

1927-421: The rate. One of the greatest advantages of the new 2400 bit/s MELPe is that it shares the same bit format as MELP, and hence can interoperate with legacy MELP systems, but would deliver better quality at both ends. MELPe provides much better quality than all older military standards, especially in noisy environments such as battlefield and vehicles and aircraft. In 2002, following extensive competition and testing,

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1974-429: The two parent companies also intended to combine their respective areas of competitive advantage to jointly develop and sell next-generation products. In June 2001, Thales formed ThalesRaytheonSystems , an equal-ownership joint venture with Raytheon combining their radar and communication systems divisions. It was restructured in 2016 to sell exclusively to NATO agencies and member states. In 2002, Thales set up

2021-607: Was completed in December 2023. Thales Group supplies electronic devices and equipment used by the French Armed Forces from its past as Thomson-CSF, including the SPECTRA helmet for the army and the gendarmerie . It has worked with Dassault Aviation on the Dassault Rafale aircraft and made its SPECTRA defensive aids. Thales often worked with DCNS and designed the electronics used on French ships, and it

2068-462: Was originally due for launch in the summer of 2017, multiple delays pushed the new launch date back by 20 months to 2019. The project's many setbacks are considered to reflect negatively on the city's reputation, with Bordeaux's city's mayor and former French prime minister Alain Juppé , calling Thales' inability to meet its commitments "unacceptable behaviour." Michel Josserand, former head of THEC,

2115-560: Was signed in October of that year. In 2016, Thales acquired Vormetric , a data security company, for $ 400M. In 2017, it acquired Guavus and bid €4.76B for digital security company Gemalto . In 2018, Thales committed to divesting nCipher as a condition for its acquisition of Gemalto; in June 2019 it divested nCipher to Entrust . In 2023, Thales acquired cybersecurity company, Imperva , from Thoma Bravo for $ 3.6B. The acquisition

2162-416: Was tested against other candidates such as France 's HSX (Harmonic Stochastic eXcitation) and Turkey 's SB-LPC (Split-Band Linear Predictive Coding), as well as the old secure voice standards such as FS1015 LPC-10e (2.4 kbit/s), FS1016 CELP (4.8 kbit/s) and CVSD (16 kbit/s). Subsequently, the MELPe won also the NATO competition, surpassing the quality of all other candidates as well as

2209-523: Was the 8th largest defence contractor in the world with 55% of its total sales from military work. Patrice Caine was appointed chairman and CEO in December 2014. The firm began as Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston (CFTH), established in 1893. In 1968 Thomson-Brandt (a renamed CFTH) merged its electronics arm with that of Compagnie générale de la télégraphie sans fil (CSF) to form Thomson-CSF , which changed its name to Thales in December 2000. In October 1999, Samsung Electronics announced

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