A consortium of auto makers and telecommunications companies is trialling LTE-Vehicular (LTE-V) communications systems on a ‘connected motorway’ in Germany to test its potential as an enabler for road safety applications and traffic control services, as well as emerging automated driving use cases.
Audi, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, Toyota Motor Europe and other car manufacturers are conducting the technical field trials on a section of the ‘digital A9 motorway testbed’ near Ingolstadt. The scope of the tests is to assess the performance of LTE-V for connected vehicle communications during its standardization process.
LTE-V is an evolutionary variant of the fourth generation standard for mobile communications LTE (4G), which is being specified within the European 3GPP project that develops telecommunications standards, as part of their Release 14. This variant is specifically designed to meet automotive requirements for both vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. It can address multiple application types, ranging from connected vehicle safety applications such as collision and pedestrian warnings, to connected vehicle smart mobility applications that will enable users, systems and cars to adapt the driving strategy for fuel savings and reduced travel delay.
The field trials are performed under realistic conditions on a public highway. Using test cars, the technology has to prove itself under various scenarios and environmental conditions encountered in real life to evaluate its performance and feasibility for different future use cases and applications. Deutsche Telekom communications infrastructure has been specially equipped with LTE-V hardware from Huawei to support the trial scenarios. Audi, Toyota, Europe and other car manufacturers have equipped research vehicles with the LTE-V hardware developed by Huawei. Based on the trial results and experience gained, the partners will provide input into the standards specifications for LTE-V. The partners are contributing also to requirements definition for later releases of the 3GPP project, which will aim to enable a wide range of emerging use cases from connected and automated driving to new mobility services in the 5G era from 2020.
