Silicon Updates: Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology for Connected World

"Connected World" is the word that we are coming across in the recent times. But, there is still more to know about the term "Connected". Gradually, we are moving into a world where every thing is connected to every other thing - be it smartphone connected to you home theatre, a table connected to smart TV or even a smart home that can be operated by your smart watch! There are innumerable applications of connected devices. This article is specific to yet-another connected technology called Cellular Vehicle-to-everything technology; in short, C-V2X, where 'X' represents everything.

Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology for Connected World

The V2X technology, as the name suggests, connects your vehicle to everything. The objective of V2X technology is to provide accident-free, eco-friendly and more predictable and productive travel to the users along with more efficient, more enjoyable driving experience. The characteristics of the C-V2X vehicles are:

• Highly secured
• Highly intelligent
• Always connected
• Incresingly autonomous
• Increasingly electric (or hybrid)

Always-connected vehicle of the future

When talking about the V2X vehicles, we can classify their capabilities into two categories - Heterogeneous connectivity and On-device intelligence.
Read more: Microsoft's connected vehicle platform.
Heterogeneous connectivity includes the capabilities of communication to everything, Connected infotainment, Wireless EV charging, Real-time navigation, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connectivity and Cellular connectivity. On the other hand, on-device intelligence includes the capabilities of intuitive instrumentation, immersive multimedia, augmented reality, always-on sensing, computer vision and machine learning.

Part of rich roadmap of technologies

The V2X connectivity gives vehicles the capability to communication with each other. For instance, suppose that you are about to hangout for a long drive. Imagine, a single touch on your smartphone you will get the route to your destination on your maps, traffic updates over the route, your playlist will be updated based upon the weather, the condition of your will be popped up and finally signals the location of your car keys! How comfortable it is! This is what the purpose of V2X technology is.
Read more: Is 5G really better than 4G?
Cellular V2X (C-V2X):
C-V2X is the unified connectivity platform for connected vehicles that operates on LTE. Upon the availability of 5G commercially, the mode of communication will be upgraded. The C-V2X defines two complementary transmission modes - Direct communications and Network communications.

Flexible 5G network architecture also brings benefits

Characteristics of Direct communication:
Built upon LTE Direct device-to-device design with enhancements for high speed, low latency, high density and improved synchronization.

• Proximal direct communication over hundreds of meters separation
• Latency-sensitive use cases like V2V safety
• Operates both in- and out-of-coverage

Read more: Huawei TAC-2020 based on Tactile Internet.

Characteristics of Network communication:
Messages over the network can either be broadcast or unicast from V2X server to vehicles.

• Wide area network communications
• More latency tolerant use cases like V2N situation awareness
• Leverages existing LTE networks

Challenges faced by V2X communication:
High relative speeds - The V2X communication cannot be implemented effectively with the vehicles are moving with high relative speeds. This is one of the biggest challenges, as speed is one of the major objectives of the means of transport (vehicles).
High node densities - The V2X communication becomes ambiguous when the number of vehicles in a given location/region is high.
Read more: VR & AR through 5G communication.
Time synchronizatoin - Time synchronization is a major factor in case of devices out-of-coverage.

C-V2X designed for both in-coverage and out-of-coverage

Qualcomm is one of the firms working on connected devices and connected vehicles.

Qualcomm Snapdragon automotive solutions

All the LTE communication devices are subjected to be replaced with 5G devices upon the availability of 5G commercially.
Read more: 5G is not just about smartphones.