C-V2X

Vehicular-to-Everything (V2X) communication is important in enabling safe, dependable, and efficient transportation services, which can be implied in both the near- and long-term and can meet the requirements of today and tomorrow.
Cellular V2X (C-V2X) is the technology developed within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and designed to operate in vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-network modes. It is an upcoming prominent technology that can achieve the V2X requirements and plan, most systematically, the way to connected and automated driving. Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is important in generating real-time and highly reliable information for implementing safe, efficient, and environmentally-conscious transportation services and laying the groundwork for connected and automated driving (CAD).
Cellular Vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) has vast potential to deliver fair transfiguring benefits in enhancing vehicular traffic management worldwide. It helps ease problems like traffic congestion, increased fuel consumption, road safety, and minimized road capacity. It presents the substructure for vehicles to commune with each other and everything around them, providing all-around non-line-of-sight awareness and a higher level of predictability for better road safety and autonomous driving.

Cellular V2X is a 3GPP standard for V2X applications such as self-driving cars. It is an alternative to 802.11p, the IEEE specified standard for V2V and other forms of V2X communications.

Cellular V2X uses 3GPP standardized 4G LTE or 5G mobile cellular connectivity to exchange messages between vehicles, pedestrians, and wayside traffic control devices such as traffic signals. It commonly uses the 5.9 GHz frequency band, which is the officially designated intelligent transportation system (ITS) frequency in most countries. C-V2X can function without network assistance and exceeds the range of DSRC by about 25%.

C-V2X was developed within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to replace DSRC in the US and C-ITS in Europe.

History

The cellular V2X technology can be traced back to the early 2000s when the idea of using cellular networks for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication was first proposed.
In 2003, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated the 5.9 GHz band for Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC), a technology that enables V2V and V2I communication. However, DSRC never gained widespread adoption due in part to its high cost and lack of interoperability with existing cellular networks. In 2010, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that called for using V2X technology to improve road safety.
The NPRM proposed mandating the use of DSRC in new vehicles but also included the possibility of using cellular technology for V2X communication. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced its intention to launch a pilot project to test cellular V2X technology. The pilot project, launched in 2013, uses LTE-based V2X communication.

In 2014, 3GPP Release 13 spurred studies to test the applicability of the then-current standards to V2X. This resulted in the 3GPP Release 14 specifications for C-V2X communications, finalized in 2017. 3GPP Release 15 introduced 5G for V2N use-cases and 3GPP Release 16 includes work on 5G NR direct communications for V2V/V2I.GSA
C-V2X Market Report
(retrieved 15 October 2019)

In Europe, the EU announced in July 2019 that it was adopting a technology-neutral approach to C-ITS, leaving the way forward for 4G, 5G and other advanced technologies to be part of V2X applications and services.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission proposed late in 2019 that 20 MHz and possibly 30 MHz of the 5.9 GHz band be allocated to C-V2X. In November 2020, this proposal was accepted, and the upper 30 MHz (5.895–5.925 GHz) were allocated to C-V2X.

Modes

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is important in providing real-time and highly dependable information flows to enable safe, efficient, and environmentally-conscious transportation services and leading the way to connected and automated driving. Cellular V2X (C-V2X) is the technology developed in 3GPP and is designed to operate in two modes:

* Device-to-network: communication using conventional cellular links for vehicle-to-network (V2N) applications such as cloud services in end-to-end solutions
* Device-to-device: direct communication without the use of network scheduling for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) applications such as vulnerable road user protection and tolling

C-V2X mode 4 communication relies on a distributed resource allocation scheme, namely sensing-based semipersistent scheduling which schedules radio resources in a stand-alone fashion in each user equipment (UE).

Problems

All the communications systems based on wireless communication suffer from the drawbacks, inherent to wireless communication, which are the limited capacities in various areas:

* Limited channels, This limit will affect especially metropolitan areas.
* Limited data rates,
* Wireless communication is susceptible to external influences, which may be hostile.
* In metropolitan areas, limits of data propagation due to surroundings such as buildings, tunnels and also Doppler effects, causing propagation speed reduction by repetitive transmissions required.
* The costs to provide a comprehensive appropriate network such as LTE or 5G are enormous.
* Possible abuse of this technology leading to mass surveillance.

Outlook

The outlook for cellular V2X is very promising. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate and interact with our vehicles. With cellular V2X, we will be able to connect our vehicles to the internet, allowing us to share data and information with other vehicles and devices. This will enable us to create a smarter, more efficient transportation system that can help reduce accidents, traffic congestion, and pollution.
The solution to handle the flow of data is expected to come from artificial intelligence. However, doubts have risen regarding the safety of AI decision-making.

Tests

The tests of cellular V2X are designed to ensure that the technology meets the required standards for safety and performance. These tests are conducted by independent laboratories and are overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The safety tests are designed to ensure that the technology does not risk human health or the environment. The performance tests are designed to ensure that the technology meets the required standards for data speed, capacity, and reliability. The tests of cellular V2X are conducted by independent laboratories and are overseen by the FCC.

In April 2019 test and verification of communication elements took place on the EuroSpeedway Lausitz. Participants were Ford, Samsung, Vodafone, Huawei, LG Electronics and others. Topics were communication matters, especially interoperability, said to have been successful at 96%.

In September 2019, the Global mobile Suppliers Association reported that it had identified global trials and products including:
* twenty-five operators involved in trials of LTE- or 5G-based C-V2X technologies
* three 3GPP Release 14 compliant C-V2X chipsets
* eight pre-commercial and commercial automotive-grade modules supporting LTE or 5G for C-V2X from seven vendors
* sixteen C-V2X RSUs (Roadside Units) from 13 vendors
* fourteen C-V2X OBUs (Onboard Units) from 12 vendors

Literature

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External links

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References

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Advanced driver assistance systems
Driving
Emerging technologies
Vehicle technology
Vehicle telematics
Wireless networking