Connectivity Technology Blog

The development of autonomous and connected mobility solutions requires robust and uninterrupted connectivity, especially across borders. The "5G Autobahn to Autoroute" ( 5G A2A ) project aims to establish one of Europe’s first cross-border 5G highway corridors, linking Metz in France to Saarbrücken in Germany. This 60-kilometre route will support advanced vehicular applications and ensure seamless connectivity across national boundaries. Infrastructure Deployment and Coverage The project, scheduled to commence construction in early 2025 and reach completion by the end of 2027, will see the deployment of state-of-the-art 5G infrastructure along the corridor. The coverage will include: France : A 55 km section along the A4 and A320 motorways, where TOTEM and Orange will install nine new masts and upgrade up to eight existing sites to provide dedicated 5G coverage on the 3.5 GHz frequency. Germany : A 5 km section along the A6 motorway, where Vantage Towers and O2 Telefónica w...

We have explained the concept of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles as well as Vehicle to Everything (V2X) in our tutorials earlier. Now in a new whitepaper , 'C-V2X: A New Era of Smart Transportation in the United States', Qualcomm has highlighted the potential of C-V2X to deliver transformational benefits in road safety, enhance environmental sustainability, and create new jobs in the U.S. A press release from Qualcomm said: The new report describes the ground-breaking power of C-V2X and raises the issue that regulatory delays have hindered its deployment. Implementing C-V2X and wireless technologies in transportation will bring about enormous benefits to the public interest, such as reducing roadway incidents and improving trip planning, transportation mode choice, and traffic efficiency – all of which will inevitably lead to lower fuel consumption. Examples of these benefits include real-time route guidance to bypass congestion, adjusting vehicle dynamics for optimal spe...

Radio (or Radiation) Detection and Ranging, a.k.a. RADAR is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (ranging), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anti-collision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. Radar is an important sensor in the autonomous cars. Typically, an autonomous car will have Lidar to scan the environment, Radar to identify the objects and Sonar to hear the objects. In our video of Tesla Model 3, we saw that the Forward-looking Radar is the primary sensor used to detec...

We have made couple of introductory tutorials on "Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs)" and another one on "Introduction to Vehicle to Everything (V2X) and Cellular V2X (C-V2X)". These provide you with the basics needed to understand the technology. In addition, we have also collected "3GPP Technical Specifications (TS) and Reports (TR) related to V2X" here . 5G Americas has recently published a white paper titled, “Vehicular Connectivity: C-V2X and 5G,” which covers the impacts of 5G-based cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technologies on vehicles, embedded infrastructure, and intelligent transportation networks. You can download the PDF here and this page contains a presentation and a summary video. The paper also details how Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), previously known as mobile edge computing, can help bring processing power near the vehicle to meet ultra-low-latency requirements, and to reduce network traffic towards a centralized ...

A recent paper, accepted in IEEE Network Magazine, explores the role of UAVs in facilitating core NFs with radio and backhaul capabilities. It analyses the required advancements in SBA, considering air traffic management, weather conditions and network connectivity and introduces new resource control and management functions to efficiently deal with topology and service assurance. The use of UAVs for enhancing 5G network services is then evaluated and shown to be useful considering a range of V2X applications. The first part analyses the use of UAVs to enable network services across the RAN, core network and backhaul for supporting various vehicular-to-everything (V2X) applications considering a high mobility environment that brings challenges in service continuity, latency and reliability. Meanwhile, the experimentation analysis, presented in the second part, provides insightful results related to the use of UAVs as edge cloud, evaluating the potential of hosting an ACS function o...