International diving equipment technology company Divex announced the launch of a communication system for the saturation diver. Divex, headquartered in Westhill, Aberdeen, Scotland launched HeliCom, the Helium Speech Unscrambler Communication System. Saturation divers use helium as the major component of the special breathing-gas mixture called heliox (a mixture of helium and oxygen). One of the disadvantages of helium is the "Donald Duck" effect on the voice which complicates the communication process. Early helium speech unscramblers created a lot of distortion which made it difficult for reliable diver communication. Divex’s HeliCom achieves clear diver helium voice communication through advanced DSP (digital signal processing) helium speech decoding techniques. The helium speech from the pressurized divers and the chamber occupants are mixed in an audio mixer before decoding to the selected gas and environmental settings by a digital signal processing circuit (DSP). Clarity of speech irrespective of the depth the diver is working.
HeliCom incorporates precise modeling of the translations introduced by the Heliox mixture on the human voice including both pitch and envelope distortion. HeliCom is available in a range of models allowing for the differing pressurized environments including the Saturation Chamber, the Diving Bell and the Hyperbaric Lifeboat.