5G speeds up the smart connected car industry

Intelligent connected vehicles are one of the typical application fields of deep integration of 5G and vertical industries.
With low delay and high reliability, 5G network can effectively enhance the ability of information collection, transmission, processing and utilization of intelligent connected vehicles, and improve road traffic safety.

"In recent years, China has taken intelligent and connected vehicles as an important direction for the transformation and upgrading of the automobile industry, actively organized key technology research and demonstration of manned vehicle application, and promoted the research and development of 5G, computing platform, lidar, V2X (information exchange between vehicles and the outside world) and other technologies, making new breakthroughs."
Zhang Yanchuan, vice president of the China Communication Society, said at the 2021 World Intelligent Connected Vehicle Conference.

"With the continuous addition of new scenarios such as vehicle formation, autonomous driving and remote driving, intelligent connected vehicles have put forward higher requirements for communication network bandwidth, mobility, delay and connectivity.
To this end, we put forward the '5G+ Plan' to promote the cooperation and sharing of vehicles, roads, clouds and networks by improving the technological level of network, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, so as to enhance the accuracy of information and enable vehicles to have the ability to perceive, make decisions and control."
First, a new QOS (quality of service) mechanism should be introduced to ensure network quality and reduce transmission delay, said Wei Chenguang, vice president of China Mobile Research Institute.
Secondly, by providing new roadside units, the network capacity can be improved by utilizing direct connection characteristics and network scheduling mode.
Finally, independent 5G slices should be allocated for Internet of vehicles services to ensure their special requirements for network performance.

The deep integration of smart connected vehicles and 5G technology will also facilitate the construction of smart transportation and smart cities.
In Shanghai Yangshan Deep-water Port, the project of "5G+L4 Intelligent driving Heavy truck" has begun commercial operation.
With the support of 5G and V2X technology, the intelligent heavy truck can achieve L4 automatic driving, centimeter-level positioning and precise parking in specific scenarios of the port area, and cooperate with the automated port equipment to complete cargo loading and unloading within 15 seconds, independently plan the optimal route and accurately transport the cargo to the designated location.

"Parking in ports is not only accurate but also fast.
"The parking time of our smart truck is less than 70 seconds, and the error is within 3 mm."
Yang Lei, chief operating officer of Shanghai Youdao Zhitu Technology Co LTD, said the combination of 5G and V2X technology can reduce the distance between vehicles to 16 meters when multiple smart trucks travel in a convoy on the Donghai Bridge, improving traffic efficiency.

The innovative application of 5G in urban transportation also brings more efficient, safe and convenient travel experience to the public.
"The '5G+ Smart transportation' demonstration project we built in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, is the first in the industry to achieve regular operation on open roads."
According to Lin Ming, vice president of Yutong Bus Design Institute, 27 5G base stations are planned and built along the line of the project. Through real-time monitoring of passenger flow, big data analysis, dynamic adjustment of bus frequency, while improving service quality, boost urban traffic governance to achieve digital and intelligent transformation.

"Empowered by technologies such as 5G, ARTIFICIAL intelligence and big data, the value of smart connected buses is fully realized.
At present, the intersection efficiency has been increased from 47% to 79%, the operation speed can be doubled, greatly increasing the certainty and planning of citizens' travel.
5G also allows OTA (over-the-air download technology) speeds to increase by 100 times, ensuring fast and stable system upgrades."
Lin said.

Although 5G has opened up a fast way for the development of smart connected vehicles, there are still many challenges on the road.
"The biggest challenge is still network provisioning."
Wei chenguang admitted that neither network reliability nor coverage continuity can fully meet the business needs of high-level autonomous driving at present, but the integration of cellular network, direct communication, satellite communication and other communication methods may provide new solutions for the above scenarios.

In addition, the development of intelligent connected vehicles requires the extensive participation of ordinary users.
At present, many application scenarios only stay in ports, mines, parks and other special fields, and have not yet formed competitive product-level services. How to enable more people to use intelligent connected vehicles still needs to be explored by all parties.

The cost is also one of the problems restricting the development of the industry.
"Network construction, vehicle prices, road facilities and so on all need to be considered. Only by lowering the cost threshold will more people be attracted to join the industry.
The security capability of intelligent connected vehicles should also be systematically planned from the top-level design, technical means, management and other aspects to form a joint force."
Wei Chenguang said.