YOU ARE AT:ChipsetsRoad safety with C-V2X – at a four-way ITS intersection, with no...

Road safety with C-V2X – at a four-way ITS intersection, with no traffic signals

Car companies Audi, Ducati, and Ford have joined with California chip maker Qualcomm to prove the “maturity and potential” of cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology by showing their vehicles navigating a crossroads by themselves.

The showcase at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas presented a “cooperative intersection” within an ‘intelligent transport system’ (ITS) mock-up, where the safety of the vehicles – variously, Audi and Ford motor cars, and a Ducati motorbike – was governed by their C-V2X links with other vehicles, pedestrians, and road infrastructure.

All vehicles were equipped with Qualcomm 9150 C-V2X chipsets, and guided towards a four-way intersection, featuring no conventional lights or signals. Between them, each vehicle negotiated its course, and shared non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions.

The quartet exhibited use-cases of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) safety scenarios.

The V2V use case featured the ‘intersection movement assist’ (IMA) scenario, where a vehicle is warned it is not safe to enter an intersection. IMA addresses angle collisions at intersections.

The V2P scenario exhibited how C-V2X can be used to protect vulnerable road users, including pedestrians and bicyclists. The V2I use case featured a so-called ‘work zone warning’ scenario, where the vehicle is warned to use caution because of road construction ahead.

Don Butler, executive director at Ford for connected vehicle platform, commented: “Imagine a person suddenly steps into the street from out of view and your vehicle stops because it was alerted by that person’s smartphone. This is just one example of how C-V2X can connect smart vehicles to a smart world.”

Anupam Malhotra, director of connected vehicles at Audi in the US said: “The four-way stop use case provides a glimpse of how cooperative driving will be possible with C-V2X in the future. Besides additional safety, C-V2X is designed to also improve comfort and efficiency, which can be applied to both current and future autonomous driving.”

Pierluigi Zampieri, manager of vehicle innovation at Ducati, said: “Advanced technologies can significantly improve the safety of motorcycle users. C-V2X communication is one of the key projects of the Ducati 2025 safety road map.”

The car market is broadly split between C-V2X and ‘dedicated short range communications’ (DSRC) technology. Audi and Ford are among prominent exponents of the former, along with Qualcomm, as a compliment in the ITS ecosystem to ‘advanced driver assistance system’ (ADAS) sensors such as radar, lidar, and camera systems.

“C-V2X is the only V2X alternative that provides a clear evolution path to 5G, in a backward compatible manner, and is designed to deliver reliable and consistent performance in realistic driving scenarios,” says Qualcomm.

Nakul Duggal, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm, said: “This new chapter in our longstanding relationships outlines our collective goal to realise the full potential of C-V2X as a global solution for next-generation vehicle connectivity, safety and autonomy.”

Qualcomm’s 9150 C-V2X chipset was released in late 2017, and has since been integrated into various ITS infrastructure, defined variously as ‘roadside units’ (RSUs), ‘onboard units’ (OBUs), and traffic safety modules.

ABOUT AUTHOR

James Blackman
James Blackman
James Blackman has been writing about the technology and telecoms sectors for over a decade. He has edited and contributed to a number of European news outlets and trade titles. He has also worked at telecoms company Huawei, leading media activity for its devices business in Western Europe. He is based in London.