Cisco delivers backhaul to keep GM vehicles on track

Cisco announced that General Motors is the first automaker to deploy Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul (CURWB) for vehicle performance testing, which it says can significantly reduce testing time.

GM has deployed CURWB at its Milford Proving Ground in Milford, Michigan, which opened nearly 100 years ago as a dedicated testing facility for the automotive industry. It’s where the automaker puts vehicles to the test before they hit the market.  

Previously, getting data in real time was a problem. They had to record the data from sensors locally and then analyze it off-site. When issues came up during driving sessions – in which the cars are driving at speeds of 100 Mph – engineers had no real-time visibility into what was happening, so they often ended up having to re-run the same tests, according to Cisco.

“Since deploying Cisco wireless backhaul at the performance tracks of our Milford Proving Ground, we now have stable and secure wireless network connections in this environment where we have vehicle speeds that can exceed 100 mph,” said Stephen Jenkins, director Global Labs, Proving Grounds Operations, & Materials Engineering at GM, in a statement. “This connectivity allows us to perform real-time analysis and stream information directly into our Enterprise Data Center without any buffering or human intervention.”

Fiber is king in some minds, but it isn’t everywhere. It’s also expensive to deploy and maintain.

And Cisco reminds us that moving assets can’t tolerate a dropped connection or latency, which can jeopardize safety. That’s where CURWB comes in. “These situations are where Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul shines because it brings fiber-like performance anywhere,” writes Patty Medberry, who heads product marketing for Cisco IoT, in a blog post.

Cisco backhaul uses unlicensed spectrum, typically the 5 GHz band.

CURWB & C-V2X

The partnership with GM is a lot different than the collaboration that Cisco recently announced with Verizon. In a demonstration with Verizon, the companies showed that cellular and mobile edge compute (MEC) technology can enable autonomous driving solutions without the use of physical roadside units to extend radio signals.

That involved Cisco Catalyst IR1101 routers leveraging Verizon’s public LTE network to enable vehicle-to-roadside connectivity.

With GM and Cisco’s CURWB, the purpose was to get access to huge amounts of data in real time.

GM isn’t deploying C-V2X technology here. Cisco offers the “broadest wireless portfolio” on the market to ensure success for each use case, which differs in terms of the best type of wireless technology to meet the need, according to Vikas Butaney, Chief Product Officer & VP/GM, Cisco IoT.

Cisco’s industrial IoT networking portfolio includes Wi-Fi, cellular 4G LTE/5G, LoRaAWAN and wireless backhaul.

According to Cisco, its wireless backhaul technology delivers up to 500 Mbps with ultra-low latency, high-bandwidth wireless with seamless handoffs and private mobile connectivity for mission critical applications.

The technology was introduced in 2005 by Fluidmesh Networks, which Cisco acquired in 2020. It’s ideally suited for places like ports, mines, railways and theme parks, as well as drones, according to Cisco.