Is car-to-car talk done deal in US?
By gaining the support of the city of Sunnyvale, Nissan, which has a Research Center in Sunnyvale, has effectively shifted its V2X test program into the real world. The pilot project, spanning 4.63 square miles in Sunnyvale, includes three public intersections equipped with Savari’s V2X-enabled road-side units.
In Sunnyvale, Savari and Nissan have deployed units at traffic lights to communicate with on-board units in cars. Data on traffic conditions at intersections is collected in real time, for broadcast to cars supporting V2X communication.
DSRC mandate?
Not everyone in the automotive industry is conceding V2X as a fait accompli, however.
It’s been taking more than a decade for V2X to get commercially deployed. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has yet to mandate it, fostering a measure of skepticism in the automotive industry.
Roger Lanctot, associate director, global automotive practice at Strategy Analytics, for example, believes that cellular-based V2X deployment over LTE or 5G stand will have a better chance of success as a market-driven solution in the existing infrastructure. “[There is] no need to create an entirely new network—like what’s required for V2X using Dedicated Short Distance Communications (DSRC),” he pointed out.
DSRC uses 75 MHz of spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band, which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set aside in 1999 for intelligent transportation systems (ITS).
Others believe that, although the DoT missed the 2015 deadline for a DSRC mandate, the government is moving ahead with it.
In an EE Times Radio show, Craig Aine, ADAS business development director at NXP Semiconductors predicted that the DOT will mandate DSRC by the second quarter this year. Scott McCormick, president of Connected Vehicle Trade Association also believes the mandate will come this year — but later — most likely in the fourth quarter.
Predictive safety
The number of tech companies joining the DSRC-based V2X ecosystem are on the rise. They believe V2X will eventually become a necessary companion tech element for autonomous cars.
Savari, an automotive tech startup, is a good example. The company is developing not just hardware (road-side units and on-board systems equipped with DSRC) but also its own software IPs and safety applications, which it says are available for licensing.
Paul Sakamoto, chief operating office at Savari, in an interview with EE Times, described V2X as “one of the few technologies that offer predictive safety.”
V2X-enabled vehicles and traffic lights will both know “kilometers ahead of time” what’s coming down the pike, Sakamoto said. In turn, this will ensure intersection safety, ease traffic congestion and enhance fuel economy.
With the DSRC wireless technology enabling reliable communication between moving vehicles and fixed wireless infrastructure, cars will be able to alert drivers of upcoming congestion, construction, road conditions, or emergency vehicles. Cars could respond to a sudden slowdown by braking automatically.
Sunnyvale’s Transportation Division hopes to apply data exchanged between vehicles and road-side units to enhance the operation of traffic light intersections.
Cars subject to fewer start-and-stop operations consume less fuel. V2X could lead to as much as a 15 percent savings in fuel consumption, according to the DoT.
V2X and autonomous cars
But how will V2X help autonomous cars? Sakamoto acknowledged that automakers already have technologies like “lidars and image sensors” deployed in self-driving cars. However, “Neither can actually see beyond the visual range,” he said. If a driver is not seeing it or paying attention to something, lidars or image sensors aren’t seeing it either, he said.
Although DSRC sometimes gets a bad rap as “more than a 10-year-old technology,” Savari appears to have developed new IPs that might give it a fresh twist.
Savari’s Sakamoto told EE Times, “We didn’t invent DSRC radio, but we have developed a unique way of using DSRC data and processing it as a sensor. It results in actionable information.”
Savari, for example, claims that the company designed a DSRC-based technology that offers location data much more precise than GPS. “GPS offers location accuracy of several meters. We can currently reduce that to 1.5 meters,” said Sakamoto.
Through a similar mechanism used by a Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), Sakamoto said that Savari can eventually attain centimetre accuracy in its location information.
Savari also understands individual cars’ history (collected via V2X). When a thousand cars are stuck in congested area, Savari can filter the information down to the several most safety-critical cars in the jam, explained Sakamoto. “We’ve developed our own filtering algorithms.”
Who’s who in DSRC
Those in the V2X ecosystem that offer DSRC-based radio communication chips include NXP Semiconductors, Qualcomm, and Autotalks.
In 2014, Delphi Automotive revealed itself as the first Tier One to supply car-to-car communications modules to General Motors’ 2017 Cadillac models. At that time, Delphi said that its V2V and V2I communication platform consisted of application software developed by Cohda Wireless and an NXP wireless chipset running DSRC based on an IEEE 802.11p.
Qualcomm’s strong presence in the in-car cellular modem market is based on the DSRC technology in its WiFi chip, announced as part of its Snapdragon automotive solutions in 2014.
Nonetheless, it was the Cohda/NXP team, not Qualcomm, which snatched up the automotive industry’s first big V2V and V2I commercial design win.
GM will be the first car maker to have a V2X system in a production vehicle, with their CTS Cadillac going into production at the end of 2016.
Israel-based startup Autotalks, partnered with STMicroelectronics, designs next-generation V2X chipset families. Its claim to fame is scalability and flexibility. Depending on car OEMs’ plans to design V2X features – some want a complete standalone solution, while others prefer a V2X hardware add-on — Autotalks says it can meet all customer demands with flexible solutions.
Meanwhile, Savari (Santa Clara, Calif.) and Cohda Wireless (North Adelaide, Australia) are the two most notable vendors positioned to offer a comprehensive V2X package consisting of hardware (road-side units, on-board units), software and applications.
Savari’s Sakamoto said that Savari sees its business not necessarily as a V2X hardware supplier. “We’re willing to license our technology to anyone who wants to use some portion of our software running in their own hardware.” It’s entirely foreseeable for a certain part of Savari’s V2X algorithms to run in different places in a car – like an ECU, a center stack or whichever platform an automaker decides to use, Sakamoto explained.
Similarly, Cohda’s CEO said earlier this year in an interview with Telematic News, “As the market grows and matures, Cohda will move away from being a hardware supplier to become a software licensing company.” He added, “This is evidenced by our recent announcements with both u-blox (who will license Cohda’s V2X module) and Siemens (to whom Cohda will be supplying road side units).”
Savari’s Sakamoto, acknowledging that Cohda is Savari’s potential competitor, said that it’s impossible for a single company to cover the whole gamut of V2X. “We are increasingly seeing us working together” depending on projects.
Savari offers advanced ITS applications in the form of plug-ins, which enable applications ranging from e-tolling, collision warning and pedestrian detection to traveller information alerts and transit signal priority. It covers not just V2V and V2I, but also V2P (Vehicle-to-Phone).
Operating systems to support the Savari SDK include Linux OS and now automotive-grade QNX.
Smart city challenge
To improve transportation infrastructure in communities isn’t just a pipe dream. Given the fact that more than 78 medium-sized U.S. cities applied for the DOT’s Smart City Challenge (issued in December, 2015), the idea appears to be catching on.
The DOT has pledged up to $40 million to one city to help it define what it means to be a “Smart City “and become the country’s first city to fully integrate innovative technologies – self-driving cars, connected vehicles, and smart sensors – into its transportation network.
The winning city will be announced in June from seven finalists that include Austin, Texas, Columbus, Ohio, Denver, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco.
Savari’s Sakamoto said, “We’re planning to pitch our technology to every single one of those seven cities.”
About the author:
Junko Yoshida is Chief International Correspondent at EE Times