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What technology is both fast plenty and cheap enough for cars to warn each other about highway conditions and hazards? That'southward the purpose of a continued car test later this year in San Diego, involving a half-dozen large-time tech players and C-V2X, or cellular vehicle-to-everything communications. AT&T, Ford, Nokia, Qualcomm Technologies and others will test, amid other things, how much C-V2X can do directly communicating with vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, and roadside infrastructure such as traffic signs or construction zones.

Who's Doing What, Where, and Why

Even without much authorities interest, this tale is crammed with buzzwords (synergies, facilitators) and acronyms upward the wazoo. We'll translate as we keep, and keep information technology unproblematic. This is a test using three things:

  • Ford cars. Ford has been placidity lately on autonomous driving, merely it'south out front here;
  • AT&T cellular information service. AT&T has much of the automobile telematics market now, not Verizon;
  • Nokia computing technology using the emerging Qualcomm 9150 C-V2X chipset, which integrates communications that are both straight (to pedestrians, other cars) and network-based.

This all makes it V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure), V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle), and V2P (vehicle-to-pedestrian, or cyclist).

The Qualcomm chipset will exist available in sample quantities to suppliers and automakers in in 2018, the visitor said. It could be in 2020 model cars, meaning as little as two years from now.

Testing will take place at the San Diego Regional Proving Ground (SANDAG) working with ITS (intelligent transportation solutions) provider McCain, Inc. SANDAG one of 10 automatic vehicle proving grounds in the US. C-V2X is divers as an extension of global cellular standards by the 3GPP, or Tertiary Generation Partnership Project.

Testing will support C-V2X in the v.9 GHz ITS (intelligent transportation solutions) spectrum, including exercise-not-pass warnings, intersection movement aid, and left-plough assist. The AT&T cellular network and Nokia cloud infrastructure would provide real-time map updates and issue notifications, such as a large sports event letting out or a bridge closure.

Use cases for C-V2X (cellular – vehicle-to-everything) (Source: Qualcomm)

Complementary or Competitive?

According to Qualcomm, "[C-V2X is] complementary to other Advanced Driver Aid Systems (ADAS) sensors, such as cameras, radar, and LIDAR […] C-V2X engineering science is designed to support 360-caste non-line-of-sight awareness, and is designed to extend a vehicle's power to see, hear, and understand the environment down the road, at blind intersections, or in bad conditions weather."

In other words, the motorcar(s) ahead of you will study on problems, then yous tin slow down or take other measures. The system will also accept value for autonomous cars, showing them what's changed in existent-time compared with the on-board maps they have.

Wireless communications among cars volition save lives. Proponents say information technology could be four-fifths of those accidents that don't involve impaired drivers, say ten,000 to 15,000 out of the 32,000 motor vehicle accidents a year. The Qualcomm-AT&T-Ford et al brotherhood is request regulatory bodies to go along an open mind (i.e., don't shut them out) while considering what kinds of dedicated curt-range advice (DSRC) radio systems cars would demand.

The testing will bear witness the remainder of the manufacture what C-V2X offers, and how well it deals with latency (lag) by prioritizing traffic messages on the network. The Qualcomm consortium says that by 2021, the bulk of vehicles volition have embedded cellular hardware and connectivity.