Future V2X Communication Depends on Expanded Scope of 5G, Says ABI Study

The automotive and transportation industries must expand the scope and relevance of 5G cellular connectivity to enable vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) communication for future vehicles, said an ABI report Wednesday. By 2025, ABI forecasts, 67 million automotive 5G vehicle subscriptions will be active, and 3 million of those will be low-latency connections deployed primarily in autonomous and driverless cars. ABI said 5G will “unify connectivity” in autonomous vehicles, enabling broadband multimedia streaming, cloud services for vehicle lifecycle management and the capturing and uploading of sensor data. V2X communication will enable “cooperative mobility,” which will allow vehicles to exchange status and event information via reliable, low-latency communication technologies so vehicles proactively can share “critical events happening locally with each other” to ensure safe driving practices, it said. The most promising capability of 5G for automotive applications will be its low latency, potentially as low as one millisecond, but that will require underlying URLL (ultra-reliable low latency) 5G capabilities based on the use of millimeter wave bands, latency reduction techniques and advanced device-to-device (D2D) communication, said ABI analyst Dominique Bonte. Whether those latencies will be achieved will depend on 5G standards and deployment strategies, "but the question is not so much if, but when the industry will embrace the disruptive approach,” said Bonte. Currently, the telecommunications industry is upgrading LTE/4G networks, Bonte said, but it will eventually build new radio access networks (RANs) based on millimeter waves. Bonte gave the second half of next decade as the timetable for RANs when “very low-latency capabilities will be achievable and V2X-enabled smart mobility applications will be possible.”