Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, Audi, and Toyota began testing a vehicle-focused variant of LTE on a German motorway to evaluate the potential benefits of the technology for connected cars.
The German operator announced that the partners are testing the potential for LTE-Vehicular (LTE-V) technology to deliver road safety applications, traffic control services, and emerging automated driving use cases. In a statement, Deutsche Telekom said that the tests are focused on the performance of LTE-V for connected vehicle communications, and that the results will aid broader standardisation efforts for the technology.
LTE-V is another evolution of LTE technology that is "being specified within the European 3GPP project" as part of its Release 14 standards, Deutsche Telekom explained.
The vehicular LTE variant "is specifically designed to meet automotive requirements for both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication," the operator stated, adding that the technology could be applied to collision warning and smart mobility applications.
Huawei's role is as the provider of LTE-V infrastructure, which has been deployed on Deutsche Telekom's existing network. The Chinese vendor's equipment has also been fitted to research cars supplied by Audi, Toyota Motor Europe and other car manufacturers, Deutsche Telekom said.
The trials aim to prove the ability of LTE-V to provide vehicle-to-vehicle and to-infrastructure communication in a real-world environment, and also lay the groundwork for assessing the feasibility of the technology for future usage cases, the operator explained.
Those potential future uses for LTE-V range from connected and automated driving through to new mobility services as part of the launch of 5G technology from 2020, Deutsche Telekom noted.
Details of the LTE-V trials come a week after BMW announced a partnership with Intel and Mobileye that aims to enable the Germany-headquartered automotive manufacturer to launch autonomous vehicles in 2021.
Audi in January separately acted to provide high-speed wireless access for the infotainment units of its cars by forging a partnership with Ireland-headquartered global connectivity platform provider Cubic Telecom.
For more:
- see this Deutsche Telekom announcement
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