Feasibility assessment to realise vehicle teleoperation using cellular networks

Future cellular networks (5G) will be used for a diversity of use cases. Transportation is one domain where cellular networks can play a significant role not only in connecting autonomous vehicles to other vehicles, infrastructures, and people, but also in realizing vehicle teleoperation i.e., vehicle driven by an operator from a distance. In this paper, we assess the feasibility of using a cellular network to realise vehicle teleoperation. We identify the network requirements for a teleoperated vehicle use case in an urban environment using a test setup of an LTE network and simulations. Testbed measurements reveal that teleoperation use cases can be supported even with less than excellent signal strength. Through simulation we show that the testbed can scale to cover greater distances and support teleoperation use cases even with background mobile broadband traffic.