Nokia has become the first telecommunications firm to successfully complete a trial demoing the use of non-standalone 5G technology for commercial operations of connected cars.
The testing was conducted by SoftBank at Japan’s Honda research and development site in Hokkaido.
SoftBank, a buyer of Nokia’s end-to-end 5G portfolio, installed non-standalone 5G networks that are suitable for testing connected vehicles. The test proved to be a breakthrough owing to Nokia’s 3GPP Release 15 compliant commercial-level 256QAM high-order modulation and 4×4 MIMO radio equipment were used.
As part of the trials, SoftBank tested four use cases, including the transmission of location data of surrounding vehicles at intersections with poor visibility, the identification and notification processes for falling objects on the road as well as and the transmission and secondary use of high-quality 4K video and images taken from the in-vehicle cameras.
According to Nokia, 5G will be key to help deliver the speed and capacity required to ensure vehicles can communicate and interact safely and efficiently on road networks.
Recently, Nuro was granted permission to test its self-driving vehicles in Houston, Texas. These vehicles do not have any basic human controls like a steering wheel, pedal or side view mirrors. The US Department of Transportation will be enforcing greater oversight of the trial, requiring Nuro to report about its testing and reach out to the communities where it will test its autonomous vehicles. Berg Insight has predicted that the public transport market for intelligent transportation systems in Europe and North America will reach €3.7 billion (£3.14bn) by 2023.
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