Huawei, Telefonica Complete First V2X Tests
In order for assisted driving to work, vehicles have to collect and process — on-the-fly — all kinds of data about the world around them, especially where precisely other objects are at any given moment and how fast they are moving.
That kind of precision and, especially, low-latency can only be achieved with the new 5G technology.
LTE 4G is already in use by several manufacturers for non-safety critical vehicle-to-vehicle(V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) applications, such as exchanging, critical but not time sensitive information including weather, road conditions and traffic data directly between vehicles.
However, only the arrival of 5G, offering latencies as low as 1 millisecond, will challenge the car industry’s dedicated short-range V2X technologies.
This is where Huawei, along with Telefonica come in. Together, the two companies, announced this week that they have created the first proof-of-concept (PoC) testbed that can connect two vehicles on a 5G-based V2X network.
To perform the test Huawei and Telefonica used the 3GPP Release 14 New Radio (NR), which was approved in December, along with non-standalone (NSA) 5G specifications. A standalone standard (Release 15) for 5G is expected this June.
The so-called Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) mode for 5G NR offers the possibility to support services with low latency and high reliability requirements. In this PoC test, it was demonstrated that URLLC can effectively support V2X with higher system capacity and better coverage.
One of the main applications will be platooning, where the platoon members are controlled by the 5G NR network. In this case scenario, the Huawei and Telefonica teams have achieved 99.99 % reliability within a 1 millisecond delay constraint, and decreased signaling overhead by 67% compared with current cellular systems.
Applications of the 5G-V2X services include extended sensors, advance driving and remote parking, among others.
5G networks offer a new level of connectivity for vehicle communications, supporting advanced use cases, such as high-throughput sensor data/map sharing among vehicles; see-through capabilities streaming camera information from one car to another; and wideband ranging for improved positioning.
To achieve full autonomous driving, the industry is planning to develop 5G radio specifications, as well as new NR Sidelink, which will help enable full, V2V communications.
“We are pleased with our further collaboration with Telefónica in 5G technologies,” said Wen Tong, CTO of Huawei Wireless and a Huawei Fellow.
“The 5G-V2X PoC is another joint effort to pave the way for commercialization of 5G and lay a solid foundation to realize the 5G vision of enabling cooperative autonomous driving,” he added.
5G, with its ability to offer Gigabit speeds, ultra-reliable low latency communication, as well as a massive number of nodes, will support the platform for the next generation of always connected vehicles of the future.
