Continental has announced the completion of a joint Cellular vehicle-to-infrastructure trial in Japan, together with Ericsson, Nissan, NTT DOCOMO, OKI and Qualcomm Technologies.
The companies have successfully conducted Japan’s first C-V2X testing in the country using 5.8 GHz as the experimental radio frequency for direct communication.
The use cases were designed to address various aspects of V2X communication, such as Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle-to-Pedestrians (V2P) direct communications, as well as Vehicle-to-Network (V2N) operations.
With a combination of direct and network-based communications between vehicles, infrastructure, and vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, the test results showed that C-V2X can exploit the full potential of connected and intelligent mobility.
In addition, the tests also indicated the technology’s strengths for reliability and latency, which assists in enabling the communication of mission critical messages quickly and efficiently.
Direct communication provides vehicle to vehicle (V2V), vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle to pedestrian (V2P) and other vulnerable road users connectivity even in the most remote areas where no mobile coverage is available.
Under mobile coverage, C-V2X is designed to also enable a vehicle-to-network (V2N) communication link to deliver cloud-based exchanges of information over a longer range, including information on upcoming road conditions or traffic situations.
In their field trials, the companies focused on sending messages directly via cellular V2X technology (PC5). The use cases were tested under varying conditions to evaluate the C-V2X basic communications performance.
With test vehicles passing each other at speeds of up to 110 kilometres per hour and with a truck or even buildings blocking the communications both direct and network-based communications were tested.
The companies observed a mean latency of 20 milliseconds for direct communication and a nearly error-free communication even at longer distances such as 1.2 kilometres with unobstructed line-of-sight condition as measured by the C-V2X test system.
With these results, the companies demonstrated the performance capabilities of C-V2X. The direct communication technology used in the tests was based on the 3GPP Release 14 specifications.
The companies also demonstrated a wide area V2N communication with end to end average communication latency of 50 milliseconds in NTT DOCOMO’s commercial network in the connected mode state.
The trials took place in multiple test tracks in Japan, where the performance of C-V2X was tested using five scenarios – Do Not Pass Warning, Electronic Emergency Brake Lights, Hazardous Location Warning, Intersection Movement Assist and Vulnerable Road User Warning.
These were chosen, to ensure that basic aspects of the communication technology were considered. Thus, the tests did not only focus on V2V communication but also on V2I, V2P and V2N communication under different traffic situations and driving speeds.
