MWC2024: C-V2X Gets Its Close-up

C-V2X technology represents a “Rashomon”-like experience for the average auto industry executive.? This famous/infamous Japanese movie depicts the murder of a samurai in the forest and the many conflicting accounts of that murder.? The “witnesses” to the murder provide subjective, alternative, and contradictory versions of the same incident.

This is the story of C-V2X.? The technology is expected to end all crashes and highway fatalities or it is a worthless and pointless distraction.? It is essential to reducing emissions and traffic congestion or it is too limited to do anything more than provide traffic alerts.

On the eve of Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona it is worthwhile to reconsider the promise, the expectations, and the reality of C-V2X technology.? The 5G Automotive Association will be using MWC2024 to highlight C-V2X concepts and progress.? 5GAA firmly asserts that C-V2X is not only here to stay but is the focal point of the next generation of wireless technology for the automotive industry.

It is instructive, therefore, to go back to the beginning.? It was just a few decades ago that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission carved out 75Mhz of spectrum in the 5.9 Ghz band specifically for the automotive industry to create its own private network for connecting cars.? The stated goal at the time was to use wireless technology to end all car collisions.

The automotive industry’s idea was to introduce what it called dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) for direct inter-vehicle communications.? Cars would simultaneously communicate their speed, location, and heading and thereby avoid collisions.

Matters immediately became a bit sticky as the location technology available to DSRC - GPS - could only provide location accuracy to within 4-5 meters.? Additionally, the new technology, even with the prospect of a Federal mandate, would only be fitted to new cars.? To work, the system would still be dependent upon drivers responding to alerts – of which, in traffic, there might one day (at full deployment) be too many for drivers to manage.

Originally conceived as a peer-to-peer proposition, DSRC gathered to itself a broader vision of vehicle-to-everything communications – including infrastructure.? The thought was that widening the scope of vehicle-to-vehicle communications would enhance its attractiveness as a solution for reducing collisions, emissions, congestion, and anything else you could think of including software updates and content transmission.

Unfortunately adding roadside units (RSUs) to the prospect of mandated on-board units (OBUs) vastly expanded the anticipated cost of implementing DSRC.? That cost was now no longer confined to the auto makers and their customers.? Taxpayers were now implicated since funding RSUs would mean infrastructure.

Bringing infrastructure into the conversation also meant introducing the intelligent transportation system (ITS) “community” of suppliers and service providers and dozens of state and local departments of transportation.? Combined with the concerns regarding the limitations of DSRC itself, this mission creep rather than adding momentum and enthusiasm to the effort, ended up miring DSRC in a muddle of bureaucracy – in the U.S.

DSRC gained cheerleaders, but lost focus.? It managed to attract some funding, enough to create proof-of-concept deployments, but not enough to inspire automakers – beyond General Motors – to adopt and implement the technology.

As if to add insult to injury, during the multiple decade trajectory of DSRC’s path to market, camera- and radar-based systems saw enhancements in performance and reductions in cost that stimulated widespread adoption in the service of the same collision avoidance objective.? In comparison to these systems, many of which were connected directly to automated braking or lane-keeping applications, DSRC suddenly looked redundant and feeble.

In spite of its enfeeblement, DSRC was poised on the verge of being mandated as required hardware on every new vehicle at the end of the Obama Administration in December, 2016.? Alas, it was not to be.? The incoming Trump Administration, no fan of regulation, ignored the notice of proposed rule making and allowed the process to lapse with no action.

Within a couple years, the FCC, seeing no progress toward adoption or use of the allocated 75Mhz of spectrum, pared it back to 30Mhz, hiving off 45Mhz for unlicensed Wi-Fi use and putting its regulatory thumb on the scale in favor of cellular-based C-V2X technology for the same applications.? This action had two impacts, creating a discontinuity with European regulatory activity (already experiencing its own conflicts, but reserving more bandwidth) and narrowing the range of relevant V2X applications.? It also disqualified DSRC.

Further clouding the U.S. picture has been an ongoing delay on the part of the FCC to finalize its spectrum re-allocation ruling.? Organizations that had been forced to decommission DSRC-based systems were left without a replacement technology while waiting for the FCC.

Over a period of a bit more than 20 years DSRC technology evolved from the technology intended to end all crashes to a vision of a nationwide network targeting as many as 17 different safety-centric, traffic management applications, thence down to 30Mhz of spectrum and a shift to cellular now capable of supporting only a handful of use cases – in the U.S.

MWC2024 will serve as a stage for a dozen or so companies showing their latest C-V2X solutions.? The 5GAA notes:?

“5GAA actively promotes the adoption of C-V2X as the critical technology to deliver full connectivity and be a disruptive force in the automotive market.? Quickly evolving in Europe, the U.S., China, and Japan, C-V2X is already revolutionizing the mobility eco-system and how drivers interact with the world.? It provides real-time, highly reliable, and actionable information flows to improve the overall transportation experience for vehicles, road users, and the surrounding infrastructure.”

Notably, Volkswagen continues to deploy cars equipped with DSRC technology in Europe, though no competing car makers have followed that lead.? Overall, the E.U. has paused C-V2X regulatory activities to focus on more advanced implementations of the technology further down the road.

While the U.S. and the E.U. dither over C-V2X, China has surged into a leadership role on the global automotive wireless technology stage.? China is pushing as many as two dozen C-V2X testing and demonstration zones, and coordinated New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) endorsement and testing protocols.

More than 10 auto makers in China have made C-V2X a standard feature, with more than 30 models equipped with the technology.? At the same time, roadside infrastructure is proceeding rapidly along with 5G, which is expected to surpass 4G/LTE as the preferred vehicle connectivity network by 2026, according to TechInsights estimates.

While U.S. regulators, departments of transportation, and car companies spar over chicken-and-egg arguments over whether to introduce the technology in cars first or build out C-V2X roadside infrastructure, Chinese regulators are proceeding on parallel paths of adoption and deployment in both cars and infrastructure.? It seems that in C-V2X as in robotaxis and electric vehicles, China is taking the lead in all things automotive.

Mobile World Congress will be an excellent opportunity to catch up on the progress and prospects for C-V2X.? The real action, however, will be taking place on roads thousands of miles away.? Maybe the 5GAA can help make the connection that C-V2X remains a powerful technology that is not to be ignored.? That’s a story you can believe.