A live international connected car trial kicked off Wednesday in Virginia, where participants are looking to solve one of the technical challenges for 5G connected cars: vehicles roaming between different operators without interruption to connected services such as traffic safety.
The trial is taking place in Blacksburg, Virginia, and involves eight members of the 5G Automotive Association, led by Intel and Verizon, with Telus and Capgemini among others participating.
Carriers AT&T and Verizon have each already inked their first 5G connected car deals, with GM and Audi, respectively. In those separate agreements, 5G technology is going to be embedded starting with model-year 2024 vehicles.
But as is the case in vehicles, drivers in cars that have 5G-enabled safety and other features will be on the move and it’s key to ensure V2X (vehicle-to-everything) services can happen uninterrupted even as they travel across borders with different networks and edge infrastructure that varies by region and the carrier operating it.
“Roaming services – the ability to make a call regardless of the network – is one early success of multi-mobile network operators (MNO),” 5GAA stated. “Demonstrating the connected car concept can work in a roaming scenario is the core objective of the live trial and represents the first of any such attempt in the United States.”
In addition to addressing Multi-MNO roaming scenarios, where two operators can transfer V2X service as the car moves from one location to another, there are two other main objectives of the trial. The first is how can a vehicle, using the radio access network of one MNO, use a multi-access edge compute (MEC) application that’s operated by another MNO, without losing the benefits of low latency. The second is global operational availability, or how automakers building edge applications for vehicles can ensure that a MEC application works in the same way on a global basis, regardless of if MNO A or MNO B is operating the network.
Specifically, the trial was looking at 5G with locally installed edge servers. It’s using the Stellantis connected car concept Jeep Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid, which leverages the technology to communicate with car sensors and pedestrian smartphones through a user-authorized mobile app. It’s used to deliver information about traffic hazards, such as accidents and road construction, both for driver and pedestrian safety and navigation.
Partner involvement includes Verizon and Telus exhibiting 5G Ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), hosting Capgemini’s Ensconce MEC platform built on Intel’s Smart Edge Open Toolkit. The aim is for connected car use cases delivered on the edge on Intel Architecture-based EC2 instances over AWS Wavelength.
“Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength brings AWS compute and storage services to the edge of Verizon’s wireless network minimizing the latency and network hops required to connect from an application hosted on AWS to the end user’s device,” said Jyoti Sharma, senior manager of Network Planning at Verizon, in a statement.
Harman International and Capgemini are also providing virtual roadside units and roadside equipment solutions respectively, with location aware and AI inferencing technologies. Harman has 5G-enabled onboard equipment that exchanges signals with the equipment on the road and hosts V2X applications.
Shamik Mishra, CTO Connectivity at Capgemini Engineering, said in a statement that telecom operators will have to play a major role in the connected car ecosystem by enabling services and applications.
“The trials serve as a stepping-stone for realizing the potential for automakers to provide services to their connected cars from the network,” Mishra continued.
American Tower and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute are also involved, providing testbed infrastructure at a VTTI smart road intersection where the trial is being performed.
“Since joining 5GAA in 2018, we have worked with public and private partners to help define the ecosystem for scalable cellular-based roadside infrastructure to serve the 5G connected vehicle,” said Ed Knapp, CTO of American Tower, in the announcement. “By deploying C-V2X in combination with roadside sensors processed at shared multi-access edge computing facilities, also known as MEC4auto, American Tower hopes to enable deployments of seamless multi-operator MEC services to support low latency use cases.”
American Tower has ambitions for edge infrastructure, as executives have pointed to evolving 5G networks as driving ultra-reliable low latency applications that will require more compute and capabilities at the increasingly distributed edge.