China Mobile, in partnership with Qualcomm, has developed a roadside unit (RSU) for LTE-V2X direct communication.
Developed by China Mobile’s IoT subsidiary - China Mobile IoT (CMIoT) Company Limited - and China Mobile Research Institute, the RSU is based on the Qualcomm 9150 C-V2X chipset solution.
LTE-V2X – also known as C-V2X PC5 direct communication - is a core technology of the Intelligent Transport System (ITS), which has received strong support from national policies in China.
With its evolutionary path towards 5G New Radio (5G NR), LTE-V2X is a global solution for V2X communications designed to support improved automotive safety, automated driving and traffic efficiency. It is currently the only V2X communication technology compliant with the global 3GPP specifications.
The PC5-based direct communication mode of LTE-V2X offers vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) communications on the unified 5.9-GHz ITS bands. It does this without needing a SIM, mobile subscription or network assistance.
Using LTE-V2X in vehicles and in RSUs, vehicles on the road will have the capability to directly communicate with RSUs, allowing drivers to obtain information from RSUs in a variety of use cases such as traffic signal phase timing, quickly and efficiently.
“With the prosperity of ITS, connected vehicles demand communication with lower latency, higher reliability and wider bandwidth. To address the challenge, China Mobile Research Institute spares no effort to accelerate the maturity of LTE-V2X technology, continuing to work with ecosystem partners set standards and to allocate spectrum for large-scale technical trials,” said Chenguang Wei, deputy general manager of China Mobile Research Institute.
According to Wei, the RSUs are deployed as part of an IoT project in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.
C-V2X continues to gain worldwide support from the telecommunication standards associations and the automotive ecosystem.
The companies said various live demonstration have shown C-V2X’s readiness for the commercial deployment as early as 2019.
In a separate announcement, Qualcomm has teamed up with Qianxun Spatial Intelligence (Qianxun SI) and Quectel Wireless Solutions (Quectel) to jointly develop a comprehensive high-precision global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning solution for China’s automotive industry.
This announced version of Qualcomm Technologies’ precise positioning framework supports single frequency GNSS utilizing real-time kinematic (RTK) technology based on the GNSS receiver built into Qualcomm Snapdragon LTE modems, as well as Qianxun SI’s precise positioning technology – all integrated in an automotive grade LTE module provided by Quectel.