Unmanned Systems Technology 024 | Wingcopter 178 l 5G focus l UUVs insight l CES report l Stromkind KAT l Intelligent Energy fuel cell l Earthsense TerraSentia l Connectors focus l Advanced Engineering report

36 Focus | 5G communications from traffic lights to driverless cars. At the other end of the spectrum, the 700 MHz band allocations auctioned off in 2018 will allow longer range, providing more coverage from a single base station. 5G also allows more use of massive MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) antenna systems for faster connections. While 4G allowed 2 x 2 MIMO antennas, researchers are working on 8 x 8 systems for 5G with 64 antennas that could be spread out across a vehicle. Like all new technology, however, there are engineering trade-offs, especially in this context for unmanned systems. 5G networks will first roll out in densely populated urban areas, and while the networks can be used for driverless cars in cities, the support might not be available in suburban areas and almost certainly not in rural and agricultural areas. 5G networks also operate in regulated frequency bands by licenced operators, so they are not available as private networks for closed operations such as autonomous buses on a university campus or factory sites. The initial roll-out will also be limited in the number of users and in data rates (typically 15-20% faster than current 4G LTE systems), but both the capacity and the data rates will grow quickly. One key move forward for 5G technology is the convergence with 802.11p and DSRC for V2V and V2I (collectively called V2X) applications. The 5G-PPP Automotive working group has been working on 5G V2X, with a focus on using the technology alongside highways and motorways. The ultimate goal is to deploy so-called 5G digitalised highways for what the group calls Connected and Automated Driving (CAD) solutions. The highway environment includes 5G sites and a digital infrastructure with fibre-optic connections that link stationary sensors, radars, Lidar and video cameras, and feed that data back to the vehicles. The V2X implementation is expected to use the enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services defined in Release 16 in parallel with CAD services. The first version of the V2X standard has a focus on these eMBB services, particularly for HD maps, operating at frequencies below 6 GHz and co-existing with current 4G LTE systems. Car makers don’t want to face higher costs for adding more comms technologies into the central On-Board Units (OBUs). The modelling assumes that an OBU’s central processor, which is powered by the vehicle’s battery, is sufficiently powerful to handle all the functions of the 5G modem, as well as the CAD-related applications run by the vehicle, so that the car becomes a node in the network. That would allow cars to relay data to others as part of a mesh network, as a way of extending the network coverage. Running the 5G modem alongside the central software is also driving a need for higher performance processors and virtualisation software to run these 5G V2X functions safely as Vehicle-as- Infrastructure applications. One issue yet to be resolved are the interactions between the Radio Access Network (RAN) and the cloud computing infrastructure. That includes ensuring that the low latency of the RAN is carried through to the cloud infrastructure. The 5G-PPP Automotive group has called on the 5G industry to collaborate with the automotive industry to design a suitable 5G V2X technology. The component manufacturers supply their products to the Tier 1 suppliers, so that they can integrate them and build a higher-level component. This traditional chain has been extended with the autonomous driving technology, but now HD map providers are also necessary. Updating the HD maps, including object information and raw data, will be necessary for some use cases, and is estimated to require an average of 1 Mbyte/minute per vehicle in both upload and download. That will be needed for the main information services for autonomous driving. For instance, a one-hour highway trip of 100 km at a speed of 100 kph will result in 120 Mbytes of data per vehicle, which is foreseen to be provided by the 5G network. This service includes connection fees and map creation, at a rough cost estimate of € 0.5 per 100 km. The traffic density used in the study comes from measurements made by the German Federal Highway Research Institute. February/March 2019 | Unmanned Systems Technology A 5G millimetre-wave antenna developed by Qualcomm (Courtesy of Qualcomm)