JUNE 2020
NEWS www.theengineer.CO.UK
5G NetMobil project validates
tactile connected driving
Advanced communications technologies enable safer, cleaner driving
Results from the three-year
5G NetMobil research
project show that modern
communication technologies
can simultaneously make
road traffic safer, more efficient, and
more economical.
Funded with €9.5m from
Germany’s Ministry of Education
and Research, the project’s results
include a system that alerts
drivers to unseen dangers at
blind intersections, and further
improvements in platooning
for lorries on motorways and
agricultural vehicles working in
parallel.
Platooning will see commercial
vehicles to join up in convoys where
synchronised acceleration, braking,
and steering enables trucks to
operate less than 10m apart.
Bosch’s Dr Frank Hofmann,
who is coordinating the research
project for manufacturing, told
The Engineer via email that major
benefits of platooning are reduced
fuel consumption and less CO2
because of ‘windshield effect’
(slipstream aerodynamics), better
road use, and higher safety because
subsequent trucks are immediately
informed about speed and braking
of trucks in front.
The crossing assistant has
seen a camera installed in roadside
infrastructure to detect cyclists and
pedestrians and to warn vehicles
within milliseconds to prevent
critical situations, such as when a
car turns into a side street.
Key to these advances are direct
vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-toinfrastructure
(V2I) and vehicleto
network (V2N) communication
capabilities that let vehicles to
share data in real time with one
another and their surroundings.
This communication requires
a stable and reliable data link
provided by 5G wireless technology
for cellular networks, or by Wi-Fibased
alternatives (ITS-G5).
Bosch said fully connected
driving requires direct V2V and V2I
communications with high data
rates and low latency. Part of the
project developed an agile ‘quality
of service’ concept that addressed
data link changes that can leave
less bandwidth for direct V2V
communication.
The project evaluated different
communication technologies and
the usage for the different use
cases. It also developed extensions
to these technologies to enhance
reliability.
“Direct V2V communication
represented by ITS-G5 and LTEV2X/
5G-V2X (PC5) were taken into
June 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk 6
account beside 5G V2N network
communication,” Dr Hoffman said.
“The radio characteristics of V2V
and V2N are quite different because
of the different geometry between
the vehicles and the terminals.
V2N can be used as a backup in
situations where the V2V link has
insufficient reliability.”
Dr Hoffman added that in the
cases of V2N, the network predicts
‘quality of service’.
“The vehicles inform the
network about its current
requirements,” he said. “This results
in a control loop of QoS parameters.”
The research also broke the
main cellular network down into
discrete virtual networks (slicing).
According to Bosch, a separate
subnet is now reserved for
safety-critical functions such as
alerting drivers to pedestrians at
an intersection. This ensures data
communication for these functions
is always enabled. Another discrete
virtual network handles data
transmissions to stream videos and
update the road map.
JASON FORD reports
Read more online
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