Telefonica, Huawei conduct 5G test for autonomous driving

Huawei 5G-V2X Radio for uRLLC Assisted DrivingTelefonica announced the world’s first Proof-of-Concept (PoC) testbed for 5G based vehicle communication networks in 5G Joint Innovation Lab at Madrid.

Some of the most advanced 5G-V2X services include vehicles platooning, extended sensors, advanced driving and remote driving, among others.

The Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) mode for 5G NR offers the flexible design to support services with low latency and high reliability requirements. Huawei and Telefonica demonstrated that URLLC can effectively support V2X with higher system capacity and better coverage.

Enrique Blanco, Telefonica Global CTIO, said: “This PoC between Telefonica and Huawei is another step towards 5G commercialization and a fully connected society.”

Huawei and Telefonica achieved 99.99 percent reliability with low latency of 1ms required for autonomous driving in a typical macro cellular outdoor environment, such as dense urban, suburban and rural areas. The PoC test will lay the foundations for large-scale field trials with the upcoming commercial deployments of 5G wireless networks worldwide.

China-based Huawei has used a self-contained frame structure for radio transmission, both from the base station to the vehicle and from the vehicle to another vehicle, allowing faster transmission feedback for very low-latency communications.

The flexibility of the NR system framework allows the support of advanced features such as Polar coding for small V2X packet error correction, and an optimized HARQ (Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request) procedure for increased transmission reliability.

Huawei used vehicles platooning as a typical test case for the advanced V2X services, where the platoon members are controlled by the 5G NR network. The PoC conducted at the Telefonica-Huawei 5G Joint Innovation Lab has shown that 99.99 percent reliability can be achieved within 1 ms round trip delay constraint, and the signaling overhead can be decreased by 67 percent compared with cellular systems.

Wen Tong, Huawei Wireless CTO, said: “5G-V2X PoC is another joint effort to pave the way for commercialization of 5G and lay a solid foundation to realize the 5G vision of enabling cooperative autonomous driving.”