Chapter 2
Applications and Use Cases
Mobility is a basic necessity for all of us. However, our current kind of mobility, using mainly vehicles, gets challenged by climate protection targets and the looming switch to renewable driving energies. And we, like anyone, cannot accept the fact that more than 1 million people get killed in traffic accidents worldwide every year. Technology alone offers options but it cannot resolve all the associated issues. Automation, electrification, networking and connectivity are key technologies to make traffic on our roads safer and more environmentally friendly. The way we move is in a state of upheaval. The first excitement around autonomous and automated vehicles was around 20 years ago and got quickly quiet. The hype around electric cars started ten years ago and subsided. But suddenly, new players out of the Silicon Valley are claiming leadership roles that were previously the privilege of Germany and German companies, mainly from the traditional vehicle and supplier industry. And in China, the market for electric cars is booming making the country the undisputed number one in production and sales.
Whether its electric mobility or self-driving vehicles - everything is going to come, maybe slowly, but surely. The computing and communications sector supplied by chipmakers, in particular, has the potential to make the vision of electrically driven, autonomous and automated driving a reality with its innovations. The scientific advisory board at the Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport has described it as the greatest disruption since the introduction of motorized road traffic. Through digitization and networking, our roles as drivers or passenger are going to change. Somehow a strange thought for a passionate vehicle driver on Germany’s highways and roads.
We have watched a lot of market leaders’ development efforts based upon their use cases, scenarios and application requirements for making vehicles part of the Internet of Things for many years. The vehicle ecosystem is fragmented with each stakeholder focused on specific products, applications and services. There are the vehicle OEMs and their suppliers, the data processing and service providers, the data communications and telecom operators and the semiconductor and software suppliers. Looking at them reveals that the computing and communications industry stakeholders and vehicle industry stakeholders do not always follow the same roadmaps.
We observe that vehicle drivers and passengers show new consumption patterns and mobility needs. The vehicle moves eventually from a product to buy, to a mobility service to be used, whereas the vehicles’ ownership gets challenged due to the quest for efficiency. Future mobility concepts ask for drastically increased efficiency, effectiveness, flexibility and scalability. When it comes to autonomous and automated vehicles, the trend might go from focus on vehicle driving performance parameters toward the performance of infotainment, convenience, connectivity, safety, and security parameters. Vehicle drivers and passengers expect to have all the features and functions of their smartphone in the connected vehicle then.
Incumbent vehicle manufacturers are increasingly offering more expensive and better infotainment, telematics and assistance systems. But these excessive conservative innovations in the vehicle ecosystem open up opportunities for eager disruptors. Fully networked vehicles with open interfaces that connect ad-hoc to social networks and extract data from traffic flow and their environment are one of these looming disruptions. Automated and autonomous vehicles that warn each other, negotiate the best non-stop route, exchange data traffic perpetually with the cloud, actively react to traffic lights, signage and labelling of the road, self-steering and giving the driver and passengers the freedom to surf the internet and participate in social networks. These vehicles are going to be available for today’s equivalent of 10,000 Euros or less if the customer signs for the full-service package including the mobile, entertainment, insurance and traffic flow optimization contract. The vehicle won’t be the value anymore, it’s the mobility and logistic service that count.
The first automated and autonomous driving series vehicles appeared in Silicon Valley, the Tesla S, as a pivoting approach to challenge the incumbent vehicle manufacturers with an electric powered vehicle. Disruptions planned around minimum viable concepts exploiting platforms like Uber, Lyft and My Taxi already change the habits in many countries. The objective is to become the world's leading platform provider of mobility services and logistics. It may create a totally new business model where the automated and autonomous driving vehicle is no longer the most important value-add, but where and on what route it moves us (and our goods) becomes the value provided by platform providers. These new disruptive business models might be the major drivers toward automated and autonomous vehicles with the required vehicle networking and connectivity thereof.
We will dive into use cases, applications and services from a timeline point of view in order to provide an insight into technology readiness and customer acceptance without raising a claim of completeness. Networked vehicles services are, for example, navigation services like traffic, speed camera location, vehicle parking space, and weather and point-of-interest travel data. Other services are in-vehicle infotainment services like web radio or video, news, gaming and access to social networks. Then there are vehicle convenience services as remote services, health reports. lifecycle management and used vehicle reports. Internet services surf via a monitor in the vehicle, read and dictate messages while driving, smartphone controls on the steering wheel while driving and streaming audio, music and video.
V2X networking and connectivity use cases have been created by many V2X ecosystem stakeholders including the computing and communications industry regulation and standardization organizations for years. It’s about deriving from the use cases, V2X networking and connectivity requirements for threshold, baseline or objective values for parameters like low-latency, reliability and data throughput. Past V2X use cases can be extended by taking into account C-V2X technology-agnostic use cases with even lower latency, higher range, more advanced security and the use of broader cellular spectrum and probably increased bandwidth (Figure 2.1). The use cases spread out to non-low-latency use cases like cellular connectivity, long-range and non-active safety use cases, weather conditions, etc. as well as to non-vehicle use cases with bicycles and motorbikes, vehicle-to pedestrian (V2P), vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G), vehicle-to-network (V2N)) and infotainment.
For instance, computing and communications stakeholder’s use cases huddle around V2X networking and connectivity scenarios and business cases. We will also add the view of vehicle manufacturers and explore multi-stakeholder regulations and standardization organizations. To have some guidance and avoid getting lost in the overwhelming amount of use cases published from all these stakeholders, we look at V2X use cases from their time schedule and how these use cases develop over time according to the ecosystem stakeholders.
For example, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) use cases focus on the IEEE 802.11p based DSRC protocol and the dedicated ITS spectrum.
2.1Use cases up to 2005
When it comes to V2X communications, we will start with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) within the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), which did one of the most comprehensive initial lists, summarized in Table 2.1, of V2X use cases in 2005. These use cases got categorized as use cases related to road traffic act, increasing road safety, and enabling new business models.
Table 2.1: Comprehensive use cases of the U.S. Department of Transportation (Farradyne, 2005)
2.2Between 2005 and 2011
ETSI specified a use case catalogue for intelligent transportation systems focusing on cooperative road safety, traffic efficiency, and some others that did not fit into previous ones (ETSI, June 2009). The cooperative road safety use cases are vehicle status warnings (emergency electronic brake lights, safety function out of normal condition warning), vehicle type warnings (emergency vehicle warning, slow vehicle warning, motorcycle warning, vulnerable road user warning), traffic hazard warnings (wrong way driving warning, stationary vehicle warning, traffic condition warning, signal violation warning, roadwork warning, decentralized floating vehicle data), dynamic vehicle warnings (overtaking vehicle warning, lane change assistance, pre-crash sensing warning, cooperative glare reduction) and collision risk warning (cross-traffic turn collision risk warning, merging traffic turn collision risk warning, cooperative merging assistance, hazardous location notification, intersection collision warning, cooperative forward collision warning, collision risk warning from RSU).
The traffic efficiency use cases are regulatory/contextual speed limits, traffic light optimal speed advisory, traffic information, recommended itinerary, enhanced route guidance and navigation, intersection management, cooperative flexible lane change, limited access warning, detour notification, in-vehicle signage, electronic toll collection, cooperative adaptive cruise control, and cooperative vehicle-highway automation system (platoon).
Furthermore, ETSI ITS specified use cases on point-of-interest notifications, automatic access control and parking access, local electronic commerce, vehicle rental, sharing, assignment and reporting, media downloading, map downloading and updating, ecological and economical driving, instant messaging, personal data synchronization, SOS service, stolen vehicle alert, remote diagnosis and just-in-time repair notification, vehicle relation management, vehicle data collection for product life cycle management, insurance and financial services, fleet management, vehicle software/data provisioning and updating, loading zone management, and vehicle and RSU data calibration.
In 2011, DOT focused on safety applications with connected vehicles (DOT HS 811 492A, September 2011) in a vehicle infrastructure integration architecture (Figure 2.2). According to the DOT, these are vehicles turning right in front of buses (VTRW), forward collision warning (FCW), emergency electronic brake light (EEBL), blind spot warning (BSW), lane change warning and assist (LCA), intersection movement assist (IMA), red light violation warning (RLVW), speed compliance (SPD-COM), curve speed compliance (CSPD-COM), speed compliance work zone (SPDCOMPWZ), oversize vehicle compliance (OVC), emergency communications and evacuation information (EVACINFO), mobile visually impaired pedestrian signal system (PED-SIG), pedestrian in signalized intersection warning (PEDINXWALK), data for intelligent traffic signal system (I-SIGCVDAT), RF monitoring (RFMON), OTA firmware update (FRMWUPD), parameter uploading and downloading (PARMLD) and traffic data collection (TDC).
The European Automotive and Telecom Alliance (EATA) got started by the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society in September 2016 and is comprised of six associations: ACEA, CLEPA, ETNO, ECTA, GSMA, and GSA. Its main charter is to promote the wide deployment of hybrid connectivity for connected and automated driving in Europe. EATA’s first objective is to see through a pre-deployment project aimed at testing the performance of hybrid communications under real traffic situations. Both EATA and 5G-PPP signed a memorandum of understanding with EATA in 2017 to collaborate on prioritization of use cases among other fields in order to better support standards for connected and automated driving. Prioritization of use cases—including future ones and the various technical requirements—needs to be agreed upon and then passed on to standards bodies such as ETSI, 3GPP, and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). EATA and 5G-PPP jointly address spectrum-related issues for V2X communications and the usage modalities of certain bands, security and privacy, and vehicle safety requirements using hybrid communications (Figure 2.3).
EATA use cases are automated driving with automated overtake, cooperative collision avoidance, high density platooning, road safety, and traffic efficiency services including collective perception like see-through, vulnerable road user (VRU) discovery, bird’s eye view, the digitalization of transport and logistics encompassing remote sensing and control, remote processing for vehicles and intelligent navigation, information society on the road, and nomadic nodes. During a first phase, EATA tests applications such as highway chauffeuring, truck platooning, and telecommunication network functionalities including network slicing, hybrid communications, and LTE broadcasting. The EATA aims at enhancing and upgrading the environment for existing pilot projects for the highway chauffeur Level 3 and Level 4, high-density truck platooning, and automated valet parking from 2018 onward.
The EU Commission and industry manufacturers, telecommunications operators, service providers, SMEs, and researchers initiated 5G-PPP, the 5G infrastructure public private partnership. In October 2015, 5G-PPP published a white paper (5G PPP, 2015) on its 5G automotive vision with contributions from Volkswagen, Volvo, PSA, Bosch, Orange, Vodafone, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, CTTC, King’s College London, Eurescom, and TU Dresden. The use cases and applications—including intersection collision risk warning, road hazard warning, approaching emergency vehicle warning, pre- and post-crash warning, electronic emergency brake warning, green light optimal speed advisory, energy-efficient intersection, motorcycle approaching information, in-vehicle signage, red light violation warning, and traffic jam ahead warning—were derived from European research projects simTD, DRIVE C2X, and Compass4D, completed between 2013 and 2015.
5G-PPP specifies technical end-to-end latency, reliability, data rates, communications range, node mobility, network density, positioning accuracy, and security requirements for these use cases. For example, 5G-PPP says that at least 10 milliseconds of end-to-end latency and 30 cm of accuracy are needed for automated overtake, high-density platooning, and cooperative collision avoidance. See-through and bird’s eye view requires at least a 10 and 40 Mbps data rate. Vulnerable road user discovery is defined with 10 cm accuracy. These parameters are derived using end-to-end latency in milliseconds, where latency is specified as the maximum acceptable time from when a data packet is generated at the source application to when it is received by the destination application. For instance, if direct mode PC5 transport is used, this is the maximum acceptable radio interface latency. If infrastructure mode Uu transport is used, this includes the time needed for uplink, required routing in the infrastructure, and downlink.
The parameter reliability as 10-x is specified as the maximum acceptable packet loss rate at the application layer after HARQ, ARQ, and so on. A packet is considered lost if it is not received by the destination application within the maximum acceptable end-to-end latency for that application. For example, a value of 10-5 means the application accepts at most 1 packet lost in 100,000 packets received within the maximum acceptable latency. This can be also expressed as a percentage—for example, 99.999%. Further parameters are the data rate in Mbit/ s as the minimum required bit rate for the application, the range in meters as the maximum distance between source and destination of a radio link in which the application achieves a specified reliability, and the user equipment mobility in km/h as the maximum relative speed between transmitter and receiver. The network density parameter in vehicles/km2 is defined as the maximum number of vehicles per unit area under which the specified reliability and data throughput is achieved. Positioning accuracy in centimeters is quantified as the maximum positioning error tolerated by the application. Finally, security including authentication, authenticity and integrity of data, confidentiality, and user privacy are the specific security features required by the application.
Table 2.2: Examples of use case requirements (maximum values)
V2X networking and connectivity characteristics are defined by the latency of 1 millisecond, broadcast/peer-to-peer/D2D, high mobility, non-line-of-sight, closing of visibility gaps, technology agnostics (802.11p, C-V2X 4G/5G), network independence or dependence, and dedicated spectrum. V2X standards applied by 5G-PPP are SAE J2735 (Dedicated Short-Range Communications [DSRC] Message Set Dictionary: intersection collision warning, emergency electronic brake lights, pre-crash sensing, cooperative forward collision warning, left turn assistant, stop sight movement assistance, lane change warning, traffic probe messages, and emergency vehicle approaching warning), IEEE P1609.1/2/3/4, ISO/IEC 8824-1/2/4, ETSI ITS, and CEN. C-V2X reuses upper layers already specified by the vehicle industry. V2X and C-V2X benefits are the support of non-line-of-sight use cases, medium range and beyond vehicle sensor reach, low-latency communications, network-independent, and all weather operation.
5GAA was formed in September 2016 by Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, and Qualcomm, and comprises an increasing membership including telecommunications operators. Its focus is on the development, testing, and promotion of communications solutions, their standardization and the acceleration of their global commercial availability. The 5GAA aims to address the connected mobility and road safety needs of society with applications such as autonomous driving, ubiquitous access to services, and integration into smart-city and intelligent transportation. At the Mobile World Congress in 2017, the 5GAA recorded a first list of use cases (5GAA-WG1 T-170063, April 2017) for V2X connectivity and communications together with left turn assist warning (alerts the driver as it attempts an unprotected left turn), intersection movement assist (notifies driver when it is not safe to enter an intersection), emergency electronic brake lights warning (warns the driver to brake hard in the traffic stream ahead), queue warning (provides messages and data from infrastructure of queue warnings), speed harmonization (makes available speed recommendations based on traffic conditions and weather data), real time situational awareness (delivers real-time data about city and roadway projects, lane closures, traffic, and other states), and software updates (offers mechanisms for vehicles to receive the latest software updates and security credentials).
Further use cases are remote vehicle health monitoring (delivers mechanisms to diagnose vehicle issues remotely), real-time high definition maps (provide situational awareness for autonomous vehicles), high-definition sensor sharing (provides mechanism for vehicles to share high definition sensor data from LIDAR and video cameras), see-through (provides the ability for vehicles such as trucks, minivans, and cars in platoons to share camera images of road conditions ahead) and vulnerable road user discovery (provides ability to identify potential safety conditions due to the presence of vulnerable road users). 5GAA looks to test all these use cases at V2X trials as of the RACC track (Audi, Vodafone, Huawei) at MWC 2017, ConVeX (Audi, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Swarco, University Kaiserslautern), Towards 5G (Ericsson, Orange, Qualcomm, PSA Group), Mobilifunk (Vodafone, Bosch, Huawei), UK CITE (Jaguar Land Rover, Vodafone), DT (Audi, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, Toyota), and ICV (CMCC, Huawei, SAIC).
NGMN identifies a number of vehicle use cases in the categories of assisted driving, autonomous and cooperative driving, tele-operated driving, info-mediation, infotainment, and nomadic nodes (NGMN, September 2016). The assisted driving category includes real-time maps for navigation, speed warning, road hazards, vulnerable road users, video see-through, and sensor sharing to realize an efficient traffic flow and to reduce the number of accidents. The autonomous and cooperative driving category involves overtaking, merging, and platooning, whereas tele-operated driving covers disaster recovery, inventory, and mining. The info-mediation category contains vehicle sharing, vehicle real-time tracking, toll collecting, insurance, geo-fenced advertisement, and vehicle maintenance. Finally, the infotainment and nomadic nodes category encompass video streaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, video conferencing and in-vehicle office, as well as C-V2X relaying.
V2N connectivity and communications for dynamic high-definition digital map updates is expected to require to upload sensor data to servers with data rates up to 45 Mb/ s, assuming a video H.265/HEVC HD stream with 10 Mb/ s plus LIDAR data with 35 Mb/ s. Data volumes to download the latest high-definition digital map information (depending on the layer details) are also estimated to be huge. NGMN assumes V2X connectivity and communications data rates for sensor sharing among vehicles and environment as of 0.5 to 50 Mbps and around 5 Mbps per link for V2X cooperation, assuming CAM/DENM and range and object detection sensor aggregation.
2.3Use cases since 2011
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to mandate vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications technology for new light vehicles in the United States in 2016. It addresses the use cases intersection movement assist (IMA), left turn assist (LTA), emergency electronic brake light (EEBL), forward collision warning (FCW), blind spot warning (BSW), lane change warning (LCW), and do not pass warning (DNPW). The Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s cooperative intelligent transportation system (C-ITS) projects have addressed the use cases of general traffic information, speed limit information, traffic flow monitoring, local dangerous warning, speed limit warning, hard braking warning, forward collision warning, curve speed warning, blind spot warning, lane change warning, construction site warning, road condition warning, emergency electronic brake light, emergency calling, and emergency vehicle priority control. China’s standardization bodies, China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), China ITS Industry Alliance (C-ITS), Research Institute of Highway (RIOH), and Telematics Industry Application Alliance (TIAA) have also been working on national, sector, provincial, and enterprise ITS standards for years.
The European CAR 2 CAR Communications Consortium (C2C-CC) was founded several years ago by European vehicle manufacturers to increase road traffic safety and efficiency by means of cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) connectivity and communications. It works on solutions for the use cases of hazardous location warning, green light optimal speed advisory, approaching motorcycle warning, approaching emergency vehicle warning, warning lights on warning, roadwork warning, and traffic jam avoidance. IEEE 802.11p is proposed as the communications technology for cooperative ITS and V2V. In June 2017, the CAR 2 CAR Communications Consortium and the C-Roads Platform signed a memorandum of understanding to develop and deploy interoperable V2X-Services based on ITS-G5 on European Roads by 2019.
ISO’s top-level networking vehicles use cases (ISO/TR 13185-1, 2012), (ISO/TR 13184-1, 2013), (ISO/CD TR 17427, 2013), (ISO/TR 17185-3, 2015), (ISO 17515-1, 2015), (ISO/TS 16460, 2016), and (ISO 13111-1, 2017) are maintenance, insurance, infotainment, in-vehicle commerce, telematics, C-V2X automated driving, and smart cities. Maintenance comprises remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, and FOTA/SOTA. Insurance comprises PAYD and PHYD. Infotainment comprises mobile broadband, augmented navigation, and in-cabin streaming. In-vehicle commerce use cases comprise, for example, parking, toll and software upgrades. Telematics comprise crash management, theft monitoring, remote entry, and emergency call. V2X automated driving comprises awareness driving, sensing driving, cooperative driving, and autonomous driving. Smart cities comprise traffic management, electronic tolling, road conditions, smart-home controls, and eco-driving rebates.
3GPP TS 22.185 (3GPP TS 22.185, 2017) specifies V2X, comprised of the types: vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), vehicle-to-network (V2N), and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P). Basic application classes are road safety, traffic efficiency, and others. 3GPP TR 22.885 specifies use cases, requirements including safety and non-safety features for LTE to support V2X services taking into account inputs from other SDOs—for example, GSMA, ETSI ITS, U.S. SAE, or C-ITS. Major identified uses cases are V2V connecting vehicles, V2P linking vehicles and pedestrians or others, and V2I networking vehicles with roadside units, all based on LTE communications. In addition to the use cases 5G-Americas references, 3GPP TR 22.885 Release-14 V2X (3GPP TR 22.885, 2015) contains the use case of message transfer under mobile network operator (MNO) control, V2X in areas outside network coverage, V2X road safety service via infrastructure, pedestrian-against-pedestrian collision warning, V2X by UE-type RSU, V2X minimum QoS, V2X access when roaming, pedestrian road safety via V2P awareness messages, mixed use traffic management, privacy in the V2V communications environment, providing overviews to road traffic participants and interested parties, remote diagnosis, and just-in-time repair notification.
3GPP TR 22.886 Release-15 (3GPP TR 22.886, 2015) use cases comprise eV2X support for vehicle platooning (Figure 2.4), information exchange within platoon, vehicle sensor and state map sharing, eV2X support for remote driving, automated cooperative driving (Figure 2.5) for short-distance grouping, collective perception of environment, communications between vehicles of different 3GPP RATs, multi-PLMN environment, cooperative collision avoidance (CoCA) of connected automated vehicles, information sharing for partial and conditional automated driving, information sharing for high and full automated driving, information sharing for partial/ conditional automated platooning, information sharing for high/ full automated platooning, dynamic ride sharing, multi-RAT, video data sharing for assisted and improved automated driving (VaD), changing driving-modes, tethering via vehicle, out of 5G coverage, emergency trajectory alignment, tele-operated support (TeSo), intersection safety information provisioning for urban driving, cooperative lane change (CLC) of automated vehicles, secure software update for electronic control unit, and 3D video composition for V2X scenario.
3GPP TR 22.891 (3GPP TR 22.891, 2015) studied use cases for Release 14 to identify related high-level potential requirements for 5G in 2016. V2X related use cases are ultra-reliable communications, network slicing, lifeline communications and natural disaster, migration of services from earlier generations, mobile broadband for hotspots scenarios, on-demand networking, flexible application traffic routing, flexibility and scalability, mobile broadband services with seamless wide-area coverage, virtual presence, connectivity for drones, tactile internet, localized real-time control, coexistence with legacy systems, extreme real-time communications and the tactile internet, remote control, lightweight device configuration and wide area sensor monitoring, and event driven alarms.
5G Americas was founded in January 2002 to unite wireless operators and vendors in the Americas working with regulatory bodies, technical standards bodies, and other global wireless organizations. 5G Americas references 3GPP for V2X use cases (5G Americas, April 2017)—in particular, 3GPP TR 22.185 and 3GPP TR 22.886. The 3GPP Release-14 use cases are forward collision warning, control loss warning, emergency vehicle warning, emergency stop, cooperative adaptive cruise control, queue warning, road safety services, automated parking system, wrong way driving warning, pre-crash sensing warning, traffic flow optimization, curve speed warning, vulnerable road user safety, and enhanced positioning. The 3GPP Release-15 and beyond use cases are vehicle platooning, sensor and state map sharing, remote driving of vehicles (Figure 2.6), and collective perception of the environment.
In 2017, there were further announcements from vehicle manufacturers about their latest connected vehicles or their succeeding generations of autonomous driving vehicles. Together with mobile network operators, these vehicles get tested in trials. For instance, Deutsche Telekom in Germany runs trials of V2X connectivity and communications on the Ingolstadt autobahn test bed in Germany, together with Huawei, Audi, and Toyota. Verizon in the United States has dealt with V2X use cases for some years. The operator was part of the M City project, which was an eight-year project from the United States Department of Transportation and a consortium of corporate partners including Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota. Suppliers were Delphi, Denso, Bosch, Qualcomm, and others. Verizon is engaged in V2V trials in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the Ann Arbor Connected Vehicle Test Environment (AACVTE).
In Japan, NTT DOCOMO works together with Continental to enhance connected infotainment functions and build the first solutions for cellular-based V2X wireless communications systems. In China, China Mobile, Huawei, SAIC Motor, and Xihu Electronics demonstrated C-V2X use cases including bus and vehicle interactivity, see-through, driving guide for traffic lights, alarms for pedestrians, change lanes, and emergency brakes and alarms in 2016. China Mobile has C-V2X test beds with SAIC, Huawei in Shanghai that have remote drive use cases using multiple video cameras in the vehicle with a 240-degree view of the vehicle's surroundings and control signals for the steering wheel, gas pedal, and brakes. Another test bed, intelligent vehicle integrated systems test area, with Changan and Datang is in Chongqing providing 11 types of road and 50 driving scenarios. Further test beds are with Baidu, ZTE, Dong Feng, and Huawei in Beijing and with Wuhan in Changchun.
The vehicle manufacturers are certainly the frontrunners when it comes to scenarios and use cases for V2X. We are already exposed in today’s traffic to many very different scenarios like dense traffic, monotonous long travel and poor visibility just to name a few challenging ones. Vehicle manufacturers’ advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) support us already being the driver in many of these stressful scenarios and use cases today. First, we give an overview and discover the safety and infotainment related uses cases supporting you in your vehicle today and their evolution in the near term. Second, we look at the technology providers for networking and connectivity to compare their technical point of view with the ones of the vehicle manufacturers.
Many vehicles have offered comfort and safety-enhancing driving assistance systems as a first key aspect as a vehicle standard for quite some years. These systems are classified as driving assistance systems for example for urban, rural and parking scenarios. The urban scenario encompasses use cases similar to side assist, cross traffic warning, vehicle exit assist and trailer assist. The rural scenario contains adaptive cruise control (ACC), navigation, traffic jam assist, pre-sense front, active lane assist, turn assist, light assist, traffic sign recognition and predictive efficiency assist use cases. For example, the pre-emptive pre-sense city system in the Audi Q7, where a front camera detects an imminent collision, warns the driver and initiates a full braking if necessary.
Another urban scenario use case implementation example is the Audi V2I traffic light information (TLI). It signals real-time data from the advanced traffic management system that monitors traffic lights via an on-board 4G LTE data connection and is now available for Audi A4, Q7, and A4 all-road models. The traffic signal data get displayed on an instrument cluster or HUD as time-to-green countdown. Future services will be the integration into vehicle start and stop features, navigation guidance and route optimization, and predictive services like green light optimized speed advice (GLOSA). The use case is implemented in partnership with the Traffic Technology Services (TTS), Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC) and city of Las Vegas. General Motors demonstrated as well with the Cadillac CTS vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) capability whereas vehicles receive real-time data from traffic light controllers on signal phasing and timing in 2017.
The current road traffic act and safety related use cases do not make use of V2X networking and connectivity so far. But these use cases will evolve. Millions of vehicles have been equipped with emergency call services for years providing a wireless link into the vehicle. Typical additional use cases of these V2I application are emergency electronical brake light (EEBL), forward collision warning (FCW), intersection collision warning (ICW), stationary vehicle warning (SVW) and pre-crash-warning (PCW). We find in the vehicle automatic high beams, forward collision warning, front automated emergency braking, lane departure warning, lane keeping assist, blind-spot monitor, front parking assist, parking assist, rear automated emergency braking, rear cross-traffic monitor, rear parking assist, automatic distance control (ADC), blind spot sensor, lane assist, light assist, dynamic light assist, drowsiness warning, side assist, traffic sign recognition and traffic jam warning (TJW).
And now V2X networking and connectivity moves in. For example, an ITS safety package is available on three Toyota models in Japan for the 2017 Prius, Lexus RX and Toyota Crown. It is based on standardized ITS/DSRC frequency of 760 MHz and enables V2V applications like radar cruise control, emergency vehicle notification and V2I applications as of right-turn collision caution, red light caution and traffic signal change advisory. In the United States and Canada, the General Motors’ new Cadillac CTS comes equipped with Cohda’s V2X communications based on the IEEE 802.11p in 2017. The data exchange with a range of up to 300 m and up to 1,000 messages per second shall increase safety and efficiency in road traffic. The new Cadillac therefore accesses data about traffic on other vehicles and infrastructure that are present in the current environment. The system supports the use cases collision warning, location and emergency warning. Several other use cases will be supported by General Motors’ hands-free, highway-driving system called Super Cruise, which is planned for the Cadillac CT6 luxury sedan in 2017.
ADAS related there are the most advanced use cases of autonomous driving (measure and synchronize driving trajectories by in-vehicle sensors) and automated driving. Here V2X communications augments driving beginning with basic warning messages that require driver intervention up to the increased levels of automation which are enabled for instance by sharing of sensor data and trajectories. Sensing driving is an inherent necessary part of these where the vehicles broadcast data gained through on-board sensors (camera, radar, LIDAR, and ultrasound) to neighboring vehicles as well as to the infrastructure and the cloud. The cloud feeds back real-time mapping and traffic update data to specific vehicles. Now vehicles see with the eyes of other vehicles either directly (V2V) or via the cloud (V2I). So, vehicles detect otherwise hidden objects e.g. around the next building and get a more extended view (eHorizon) on what is happening within the vehicle surrounding. Use case examples include overtaking warning and intersection collision warning.
The electronic horizon provides other ECUs a continuous forecast of the upcoming road network by using optimized transmission protocols. It integrates map matched localization and positioning, most probable path, static map data like curvature, slopes, speed limits and road classification as well as dynamic map data like route, traffic, hazard warnings, road construction status and weather. These data are input to the ADAS applications resembling automated and autonomous driving, fuel efficient driving, predictive curve light or curve speed warning. Therefore, map and navigation data become additional sensors for ADAS. The standard electronic horizon transmission protocol for the communication between maps and ADAS is developed by the ADASIS consortium. The navigation maps as electronic horizon supplier, require updates and more and more connectivity with rising SAE levels.
The solutions for driving safety and ADAS like parking assist, traffic jam assist, road sign assist, remote park assist, side, intersection movement assist, rear-view assist, lane change assist, electronic emergency brake light, predictive emergency braking, predictive pedestrian protection, intelligent headlight control, lane departure warning, lane keeping support, vehicle dynamics management, vehicle electronic stability, and driving comfort aggregate data from a number of sources, including camera, radar, and ultrasonic sensors and are delivered by suppliers like Bosch, Continental, Delphi and Harmann (now Samsung). The solutions add functions for connectivity control and eCall, cellular wireless, Wi-Fi, navigation, infotainment, software services and apps, HUD, dual view display, and programmable instrument clusters. The solutions for vehicle connectivity and communications may already include body (sensing, charging, monitoring) and security functions (anti-theft sys, interior intrusion detection).
An intermediate stage is the use case of awareness driving, where vehicles disseminate their status data like position, speed, and direction to all notice taking vehicles. It enables them to become aware of vehicle presence and of eventual hazards on a need to know basis. These data include pre-crash warning, vehicle control loss warning, emergency vehicle warning, emergency stop warning, curve speed warning, intersection safety warning and queue warning. The telematics control unit (TCU) or user equipment (UE) relay warnings to the driver or to in-vehicle ADAS/ AD systems. Another “in-between” use case is cooperative driving. Here vehicles share certain data with other traffic participants. These data are fed to the vehicle's automated driving algorithms to accurately anticipate what other traffic participants will do next. Examples include platooning, cooperative collision avoidance and automated overtake.
A glimpse into the evolution of V2X use cases give for instance the trials supported by all V2X ecosystem stakeholders. With the 2018 level-3 autonomous driving Audi A8, a solution for piloted driving up to 60 kilometers per hour for use cases like traffic jam pilot and remote park pilot is provided that uses today’s available technology. It is expected that by the beginning of 2020, vehicles will drive themselves up to 100 kilometers per hour under highway conditions, including lane changes, passing, and responding to unexpected scenarios. BMW explores 5G V2X use cases in partnership with SK Telecom and Ericsson in 2017. Applications are video recognition and obstacle detection with the exchange of safety data between vehicles, real-time multiview streaming, 4k 360 VR surround view, HD live conference system and drone helper with a high-quality bird’s-eye view for the driver. The technology used is a millimeter-wave 28 GHz radio access network on a 2.6 kilometer test track at BMW driving center in Yeongjongdo, Incheon, Korea providing 3.6 Gbps at 100 kilometer per hour.
Daimler demonstrates the driverless parking use case in real-life traffic in the multi-level vehicle park of the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart in 2017 and has been shown S- Mercedes luxury vehicles and trucks autonomously driven autonomously since years. The Mercedes-Benz S- and E-class vehicles reach with their Intelligent Drive driving assistance solutions advanced stages of automation. Among the available supported use cases, which also lead Daimler step by step closer to the goal of driverless driving are: active speed limit, active distance assist, active steering assist, evasive steering assist, route-based speed adjustment, active emergency stop assistant, semi-automated driving on freeways, highways and in city traffic, autonomous braking, active brake assist cross-traffic, active lane keeping assist and active blind spot assist. And PSA shows a Citroën C4 Picasso from its autonomous vehicles fleet driving autonomously through a toll station in Paris using communications between the vehicle and the infrastructure in 2017.
Suppliers maintain several ecosystem partnerships for V2X trials too. For instance, Continental and NTT DoCoMo have got a collaboration on 5G-communications for road traffic systems with the objectives to integrate infotainment functions and V2X communications by 5G in 2017. V2V without network involvement is going to be used for applications queue warning and left turn assist. 5G is then expected to support low latency and direct communications use cases in almost real-time like see-through sensor sharing (Figure 2.7). Wireless communications technology suppliers partner with several vehicle manufacturers conducting field trials. The objective is to test use cases for vehicle connectivity and communications like see through between two connected vehicles and the emergency vehicle, which aims at notifying drivers when an emergency vehicle is approaching. Both cases exploit the network-based capabilities of V2X connectivity and communications to deliver a high-resolution video stream between two vehicles.
V2X is seen as a critical component for autonomous and automated driving to support non line-of-sight sensing by providing 360° NLOS awareness for instance at intersections, on-ramps, at rain, fog and snow environmental conditions, at blind intersections and for vulnerable road user (VRU) alerts. V2X connectivity and communications enables conveying intent and share sensor data to provide high level of predictability for example for road hazard and sudden lane change warning. V2X contributes to situational awareness offering increased electronic horizon to enable soft safety alerts and reliable graduated warning for reduced speed ahead warning, queue warning and shockwave damping. In particular V2V supports collision avoidance safety systems, V2P safety alerts to pedestrians and bicyclists, V2I traffic light optimal speed advisory and V2N real-time traffic routing and cloud services. Enhanced safety use cases extending the vehicles’ electronic horizon, providing more reliability, and better NLOS performance. They are for example: do not pass warning (DNPW), intersection movement assist (IMA) at a blind intersection, blind curve and local hazard warning, vulnerable road user (VRU) alerts at blind intersection, road works warning and left turn assist (LTA). Finally there are trials that use IEEE 802.11p like Korea’s Cooperative Intelligent Transportation System (C-ITS) project initiated by the Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport with an 87.8 km route between Sejong City and the Shanghai Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Demonstration Program.
Infotainment, human-machine-interface (HMI) and telematics are the second focal point which we see when it comes to V2X scenario and use cases. In-vehicle infotainment related are use cases like augmented navigation, mobile broadband and in-cabin streaming. A wide range of HMI solutions where the driver can use a touchscreen, a central operating panel, the steering wheel remote control, or natural voice input to control the different functions for audio, video, navigation, communications, or other vehicle’s convenience technologies including in-vehicle connectivity like CAN, LIN, FlexRay, and Ethernet to link embedded control units is provided by suppliers like Bosch.
Augmented navigation is a major complementary part of infotainment and enhances traditional 2D or 3D navigation apps with real time traffic camera feeds from intersections, roadside infrastructure or other vehicles. An outcome for example is a multi-layered high-resolution local dynamic map (HD-LDM). The HD-LDM layer one covers static data from the map vendor. Layer two encompasses traffic attributes, static road side units and communications node data, intersection data and landmarks for referencing and positioning. Layer three consists of temporary regional data like weather, road or traffic conditions. And layer four incorporates dynamic communications nodes data as well as other traffic participants detected by in-vehicle sensors. Mobile broadband includes applications that require high-bandwidth wireless broadband connectivity and communications such as rear seat 4K or 8K video streaming, virtual reality (VR) cloud gaming. In-cabin streaming is a bi-directional streaming of media content from the vehicle infotainment platform and brought-in devices like smartphones over the in-vehicle wireless network using for instance Wi-Gig. There are by now plenty of infotainment and ADAS applications in relationship with in our vehicles. These are between navigation and maps, adaptive cruise control, speed limit assist, take-over assist, lane change assist, active lane assist, cross traffic warning, rear and front collision warning, wrong driver warning, park assist, remote parking, active park distance control, rear and surround view and night vision with people recognition. For example TCU modules from Harmann are ready for V2V and V2I including eCall, real-time traffic reports, service bookings up to cloud-based analytics and server platforms and evolve recently into ADAS. These modules include a complete multi-layer security architecture solution using five security features in conjunction with OTA updates to optimize protection.
Business related use cases as third main emphasis seen in the area of V2X networking and connectivity. Services for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) where ITS back end systems pull data from V2X capable TCUs for traffic management including remotely controlled dynamic routing, dynamic electronic toll collect and insurance or predictive vehicle maintenance are seen as emerging business opportunities. Traffic management including road conditions exploits sensor data from vehicles to optimize the traffic flow and to report and take action on road conditions in case of a smart city. Examples consist of variable message signs with real time traffic or routing info, dynamically updated traffic lights and updating city authorities of pot holes or on poor road conditions. Dynamic electronic toll collect stretches from pre-paid or real-time toll collect over re-configurable and usage based vehicle insurances up to a seamless pay-as-you-go parking, where a vehicles reserves a parking lot in a multi-floor park house and initiates a payment pre-authorization. Usage based vehicle insurance uses customized driver analytics data stored to the cloud and compared in real time with its behavior in current traffic to adjust insurance fees. And an eco-driving rebate offered by green smart cities awards for driving eco-friendly.
For example the remote and predictive vehicle maintenance use case analyses in-vehicle ECU and other data transmitted to the cloud for deviations from the norm. The data gathered to improve the knowledge base to predict upcoming failures on vehicles that show the same deviations and support edge and cloud predictive analytics. In edge predictive analytics, the database of vehicle reference models is deployed at the network edge or vehicle itself. An algorithm tests degradation of monitored parts against the models and notifies of impending part failure. In cloud predictive analytics the reference models database is maintained in the cloud. This maintenance use case assumes a secure update of firmware and software, where the vehicle is in a safe state, and the ECUs or TCUs process the update and restore the vehicle to a working state at completion of update.
Computing and communications technology suppliers have been part of the V2X ecosystem for years and provide their view on scenarios and use cases. In 2017 we recognize three major platforms for V2X networking and connectivity solutions paving the way towards automated and autonomous driving capabilities. First, there are platforms which gather, process and analyse data from autonomous or automated vehicles and transmit and store them in data servers. This end-to-end solution has the capabilities to enable vehicle manufacturers to do their own data analytics and deep learning in their own data centers. A second connected vehicle platform option follows a connectivity and communications centric path towards autonomous and automated driving and provides dedicated solutions with plenty of experience in telematics and V2X connectivity and communications. There is no one data center solution yet, but the solution exploits the advantage of being available today in in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) and connectivity and communication solutions like vehicle grade LTE with the capability to communicate between vehicles and the network.
The third platform option works on a slightly different unique approach for autonomous and automated driving which exploits parallel computing strength and is more focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The solution uses graphic processing units (GPUs) in the data center to train neural networks offline and in the vehicle to do inference. This platform assumes not a full V2X connectivity for autonomous or automated driving. But V2X communications could be added for instance to do updates over-the-air (OTA). The supported use cases are centered around this platform focus on sensor processing and fusion, detection and classification, localization in particular HD map localization and interfacing, vehicle control, scene understanding and path planning and finally streaming to computing clusters.
The evolution of all these platform options towards automated and autonomous driving is strongly linked with 5G communications technology development supporting SAE automation level scenarios and use cases. It starts with supporting the no automation level (status data like I’m a vehicle at coordinates x, y and z, traveling West at 80 kilometers per hour), driver assistance level (sensor data like status data and it’s raining at my location and I just passed a VRU), partial automation level (intention data like status plus sensor data plus merging, coming along side), conditional automation level (coordination data plus sensor data plus intention plus let’s platoon and slot based intersections) and to end with high and full automation level with massive data sharing and sensor data fusion.
The current V2X standards DSRC and ITS-G5 offer a foundation for basic safety scenarios and use cases such as forward collision warning implementing 802.11p as physical radio layer. 3GPP C-V2X Rel-14 supports enhanced safety use cases at higher vehicle speeds and challenging road conditions requiring improved reliability, extended range, low latency and non-line-of-sight (NLOS). C-V2X supports direct communications operating in the ITS 5.9 GHz band without network assistance, which makes it an option for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) communications. Vehicles communicate with each other and roadside infrastructure without requiring a subscriber identity module (SIM), cellular subscription or network assistance. Disabled vehicle after blind curve, and do-not-pass warning and road hazard warnings in varying road conditions are examples of these enhanced safety use cases.
C-V2X has an evolution path toward 5G including backward compatibly addressing additional use cases and safety requirements. The first phase establishes a foundation for basic V2X use cases like forward collision warning and basic safety with 802.11p or C-V2X 3GPP Rel-14. The second phase exploits a better communications link budget providing longer range and increased reliability with C-V2X 3GPP Rel-14 for enhanced safety use cases like disable vehicle after blind curve. And the third phase is going to enable advanced safety use cases like see-through and video, radar or LIDAR sensor sharing, cooperative driving or bird’s eye view of intersection approaching vehicles and 3D HD map updates with C-V2X 3GPP Rel-15 or 16.
The evolution of C-V2X toward a support of automated and autonomous driving use cases holds the promise to fulfill the requirements with 5G networking and connectivity. Current autonomous and automated vehicle prototypes work independently from cellular networks in the common sense in that they find their way with available on-board communications and computing power. But without V2X connectivity and communications these vehicles in large numbers make the same problems that individual drivers produce today. V2X connectivity and communications is needed requiring a highly flexible, adaptive, and reliable and low-latency network. With short and long range, high bit rates, very low latency and enhanced security, today 5G promises exactly what is needed. And 5G shall complement existing communications technologies in the vehicle sector, such as the ETSI ITS G5 intelligent transport system proposal.
Wireless infrastructure suppliers expect that 5G-enabled automated driving will not happen suddenly and there is a lot that can be used from 4G LTE and its evolution towards 5G. Since V2X is about vehicles, it includes other vehicles like excavators and mining vehicles as well and even a bus can be computerized or automated further. Therefore, wireless infrastructure providers elaborate on use cases like assisted driving, which warns road users in advance about road hazards or helps when overtaking other vehicles as well to provide e.g. latency-optimized protocol stacks and dynamic edge cloud computing supporting fast mobility.
The use cases evolve over time on the way to 5G networks and may require even more networking and connectivity functions. It should be emphasized that ETSI ITS G5 technology alone might not be enough to meet these requirements and LTE complements ITS G5 for V2V and V2I communications as direct V2V communications for proximity, path prediction and collision anticipation and warning, advanced driving assistance with collective perception, sensor sharing, cooperative lane change, traffic safety with vulnerable road user protection, intersection assistance, accurate positioning, platooning in particular see-through, intersection and lane change as well as rear end warning use cases. LTE and the future 5G does mid and long range V2X connectivity and communications in case of the weather, road and traffic conditions electronic horizon use case. And the wireless infrastructure supplier’s 5G V2X use cases embrace cloud based infotainment with broadband multimedia, update lane-level maps with real time context and V2V communications for increased road safety and comfort (e.g. truck platooning) and vehicle analytics with real time data analysis as well.
Whereas wireless infrastructure suppliers presume for in-vehicle infotainment, high definition maps, location based services and vehicle maintenance no ultra-reliability nor low latency though it does anticipate an increasing demand on vehicle safety due to autonomous and automated driving with an increasing need for low latency and reliability of connectivity and communications. In particular with autonomous driving, the V2V and V2I communications has to be fast and reliable as it will be used for example to broadcast warning messages. Accurate positioning and high availability of the communications both in time (end-to-end (E2E) latency below 5 milliseconds as application level delay) and space (positioning accuracy shall be less than 0.5 meters) are needed as well. The availability is aiming for 100%. The vehicle communication service should be ubiquitously available. This is not equivalent to 100% mobile coverage as the V2X communications is ubiquitous by itself. Wireless infrastructure suppliers see V2X connectivity and communications value first in infotainment and mapping and navigation. Second, network function virtualization (NFV) and V2X plus cloud open opportunities for evolving telematics services like insurance, maintenance and traffic management. And third, V2X has to evolve to be useful for automated and autonomous driving.
2.4Conclusions
The role of V2X connectivity and communications on our way forward toward autonomous and automated driving is mainly determined to reduce traffic fatalities with highly optimized passive safety and transport efficiency by highly automated vehicles (HAV) with increased situational awareness, provision for proactive driver warnings and intervention to prevent and mitigate crashes where driver response is late or non- existent. The increasing number of sensors in highly automated vehicles and V2X connectivity and communications is going to enable steady rising levels of automation corresponding to the BASt, NHTSA and SAE levels of automation. Today’s V2X networking and connectivity use cases implementing the road traffic act, increasing road safety and enabling business cases as shown in Figure 2.8 have been around for quite a lot of years. Therefore, we classify three main use case categories, which are road safety (ADAS), in-vehicle infotainment and services (business model) related. Nevertheless, we still witness some issues and opportunity for improvements.
First, the use cases from all ecosystem stakeholders do not vary significantly according to the categories done years ago, even if they are called traffic efficiency, co-operative road safety and infotainment now, like the Table 2.3 below shows exemplarary.
Table 2.3: Use cases according to road traffic act, road safety, and business cases
Second, the majority of use cases stem from the communications and computing stakeholders, whereas the vehicle manufacturers hold back. Nevertheless, vehicle manufacturers have got plenty of use cases already addressed by their vehicles’ ADAS systems. Additionally, V2X connectivity and communications are already implemented for infotainment and navigation use cases and are ready to go with the availability of communications modems and smartphones built into the vehicle for many other business cases (including insurance). What role does V2X play for road traffic acts and road safety use cases?
One role is certainly the possible extension of the active safety limit beyond the line-of-sight—for example, with cooperative adaptive cruise control and intersection collision warning. Under the assumption that V2X provides safe and secure connectivity and communications, V2X supports a distinctive number of road traffic acts and road safety use cases that cannot otherwise be covered by vehicle sensors. Some examples are non-line-of-sight intersection movement assists, blind spot detection, lane departure and lane change warnings, left-turn assists, or emergency electronic brake lights. Another scenario in which V2X might apply advantageously is when the vehicle on board sensor range is too short, or when sensor data are sacrificed due to adverse weather and environmental conditions. The fusion of V2X connectivity and communications with in-vehicle sensors gives—under certain previously stated assumptions—increased reliability, increased accuracy, improved warning timing and redundancy, and backup in case of failures. V2X could alert and warn complimentary drivers and vehicles themselves similar to ADAS alerts in use cases such as automatic braking, steering, and parking, or cooperative adaptive cruise control and, ultimately, autonomous and automated driving.
Another role of V2X is being an enabler of wider intelligent transportation systems (ITS) solutions within the stakeholder ecosystem and its evolution into a pervasive, cross-vertical connectivity and communications service for the Internet of Things. The debate around inevitability of V2X is still ongoing and open, but generally, V2X connectivity and communications is considered critical for Level 4 autonomous—and certainly Level 5 automated—vehicle operation. To achieve this goal, V2X connectivity and communication has to be incorporated into a wider, unified autonomous and automated vehicle framework to support data gathering, fusion, storage, and collaborative processing. Assuming a successful integration, this framework then enables much wider cooperative, shared, and service-based business cases for current vehicle sharing such as vehicle-as-a-service (VaaS), mobility-as-a-service (MaaS), freight-as-a-service (FaaS) and smart cities or IoT paradigms such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H).
Third, we do see room for improvement for the current use cases by adding more the real world’s safety and security requirements. What do we mean by that? The road to the future of autonomous and automated vehicle driving goes straight through the big megacities in Asia, America, Australia, and Europe, with their unpredictable and chaotic urban environments. If V2X connectivity and communications wants to be successful, the megacities are proving grounds for level 3, 4, and 5 vehicles with V2X. The real world of a megacity looks a little bit different compared to the cleaned up use cases or test trials for autonomous and automated driving.
At one moment, a siren of an emergency vehicle will swell, a delivery truck will block our escape way, and the drivers behind will immediately honk at us. After we finally escape at the next corner, a pedestrian exits a taxi cab on the street without looking around, and someone on a bike quickly comes at us from the wrong way before we hit the brake for a full stop. Does this sound familiar? Driving in a megacity requires every little bit of attention we can gather. Such a scenario happens every second in the global megacities, and is very different in complexity compared to the level 3 or higher vehicle test-driving on highways or less crowded city centers. Of course, there is the use case of the autonomous driving mode and safely navigating all kinds of weather on a well-marked highway. But we need use cases that cover the extreme nature of a rural farm, as well as one for a dense urban megacity under all environmental conditions. V2X has to work reliably, safely, and securely under all conditions, complexities, and extremes to be of value for SAE’s Level 3, 4, or 5 automation level. And that is by no means an easy task.
The evolution of V2X connectivity and communications is strongly interconnected with the different levels of vehicle automation. It is clear that level 5 fully automated vehicles require significantly greater data sensing, storage, processing, and communication capabilities than level 3 or level 4 vehicles. Data have to be processed and communicated reliably, securely, and safely in real-time. These needs are not very well reflected by V2X networking and connectivity technology today in the use cases looked at, raising concerns that today’s existing V2X technology might need some more development to meet all of these needs. But we believe that no one has been able to demonstrate a V2X technology that meets the needs of the vehicle targeting real-world megacities yet. It will take the entire power and resources of all V2X ecosystem stakeholders to evolve from Level 3 vehicles to Level 4 and 5 to finally set up the required V2X connectivity and communications framework that will finally fulfil the autonomous and automated vehicle driving promises.
V2X networking and connectivity might evolve into an IoT-like, ubiquitous, horizontal connectivity solution which is used by many vertical applications and services. There is a common agreement among all stakeholders that V2X networking and connectivity has to be considered as critical for SAE level 4 autonomous and definitely level 5 driverless operation. V2X networking and connectivity enables sensor fusion across vehicles and vehicle infrastructure and therefore additional use cases like remote sensor and collective perception get applicable. Crucial use cases are the ones which ensure and extend active safety for vehicles beyond line-of-sight with cooperative adaptive cruise control and intersection collision warning. And for example, V2X networking and connectivity is a key enabler of the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) ecosystem. And there are finally the most likely and quite soon feasible business model driven use cases like vehicle-, mobility-, freight-as a service, and smart cities. But there is still an ongoing debate between all V2X ecosystem stakeholders about the business practicality of V2X networking and connectivity.
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