C-V2X Supported Automated Driving

Automated driving is expected to improve road safety and traffic efficiency. Host vehicle onboard sensing systems typically sense the environment up to 250 m ahead of the vehicle. Today's LiDARs can see approximately 120 m, and recognition of small objects, such as animals or dropped cargo, however, today reliably drop when range is more than 50m. Connected driving adds an electronic horizon to the onboard sensing system which could extend the sensing range and greatly improves the efficiency. Therefore, collaborative sensing in which the vehicle exchanges not only status messages but also real data has recently been intensively discussed. Current cellular 3G/4G networks have enhanced the downlink capacity for sharing large data blocks. However, uplink is limited and therefore vehicles are unable to share point clouds of what they see in front. This article investigates the opportunities of 5G-based cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) collaborative sensing based on the results of trials conducted at test sites in China and Finland. The results indicate that the round-trip is stable (< 60 ms) even when exchanging 1 MB/s between vehicles. Finally, the automotive industry perspective is taken into account in identifying and prioritizing potential use case scenarios for utilizing 5G based connected driving applications.