The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) represents the automotive and telecom industry’s alignment for the global connected and autonomous vehicle, supported by more than 50 member companies including many world class car manufacturers. 5GAA’s mission is to develop, test and promote communication solutions for the future of the 5G automotive economy in Europe and globally. The 5GAA is actively contributing to ETSI, 3GPP and ITU in the fields of standardisation and spectrum-related matters. The 5GAA is committed to accelerating Cellular-V2X (C-V2X) standards seamlessly embracing 4G and 5G, and would like to call on the European Commission to support stakeholders in this collaborative process by providing leadership and timely regulatory support.

The GSMA, which represents the Mobile Network Operators globally, has succeddfully collaborated with the Automotive Industry for many years. Together we have created secure solutions that have advanced the Connected Car market with major benefits to consumers. Cellular V2X will enable further cross-industry collaboration with government agencies in cities and transport. The GSMA believes that C-V2X will contribute to safer vehicles, reduce congestion and pollution. It will build upon the existing 23 million existing Cellular Connected Car market in Europe and drive the deployment of Digital Europe.

The 5GAA is keenly aware of the imperative for road safety and the need for Europe to assert 5G leadership while ensuring spectrum efficiency. Given the longevity of vehicles and the significant industry investment in cellular technologies, C-V2X will be of utmost importance as Europe and the world transitions to 5G in supporting mission critical applications and the massive opportunities associated with the introduction of a new global standard.

We therefore urge the European Commission to allow the ITS-G5 and C-V2X stakeholders to work collaboratively toward an agreement on the future of connected and automated cars, without a premature and cumbersome legislative decision.

The 5GAA is confident that the industry will ultimately align with a pragmatic solution that saves the most lives while embracing technology evolution, and managing complexity and cost. We firmly believe in and pledge to collaboratively work with other stakeholders on solutions that ultimately benefit the European Union. We encourage the European Commission to support technology neutrality, mitigating a significant risk that 5G in the key automotive vertical will struggle, thus impacting the European automotive industry and the future growth and global competitiveness of the EU economy.

Europe is an important pillar for members of the 5GAA and is leading the world in the development of smart transportation solutions. A considerable part of C-V2X innovation occurs in Europe, and will contribute to road safety, the development of smart cities and trans-border corridors, to achieve the efficiency and environmental objectives that ultimately benefit European citizens. 5GAA members are accelerating C-V2X with pre-commercial trials in Europe, and will culminate in global deployments.

We are strongly supportive of 3GPP technologies for direct communications over ITS spectrum to enable vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, vehicle-to-pedestrian (and other vulnerable road users), i.e. C-V2X, while also leveraging vehicle-to-network over mobile operator spectrum. An important part of the ongoing 5GAA work is to support the European Commission’s policies laid out in the C-ITS Masterplan, as well as Gear2030 for Highly Automated Vehicles and the 5G Action Plan. We strongly rely on the European institutional support to enable a regulatory framework conducive to an industry-driven and swift deployment of the platform of their choice.

The 5GAA looks forward to continuing the dialogue with the European Commission and the various industry stakeholders in order to lay the foundation for a 5G automotive future in Europe.

Download the letter here

Today the European market has interest in two distinct technologies for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and the provision of vehicle to vehicle communications; namely 3GPP LTE-V2X and IEEE 802.11p.

The technology-neutral nature of spectrum regulations in Europe means that both LTE-V2X1 and 802.11p have equal rights to operate in the 5.9 GHz band, subject to compliance with the relevant regulatory technical conditions.

It is not the objective of this paper to compare and contrast the relative merits of these two technologies, although the 5GAA is a proponent of LTE-V2X as today’s realisation of Cellular V2X (C-V2X), and as a platform to evolve towards 5G technologies.

Instead, in this paper, we address the issue of co-channel coexistence between the two technologies at 5.9 GHz. We note that this is a critically important issue for the ITS industry, and that it is beneficial for all stakeholders to arrive at a proportionate, fair, and pragmatic solution to resolve this matter, and allow the market to proceed with the deployment of ITS equipment.

To this end, we propose a solution – to be agreed among the stakeholders – to be implemented in up to three steps. In all steps, each of C-V2X and 802.11p can operate safety-related ITS services free from co-channel interference from the other technology. The difference between the distinct steps lies in the overall usage efficiency of the spectrum resource: In the short-term, we propose to allocate distinct 10 MHz channels at 5875-5905 MHz to each of the two technologies, while the final configuration will apply full sharing of all available channels across the two technologies. The latter will require further studies on appropriate sharing mechanisms and thus cannot be provided from the beginning.

We further explain how such a first step partitioning of 5875-5905 MHz might be complemented by additional technical mechanisms which would – where needed – allow each of C-V2X and 802.11p to access the remaining 20 MHz in a fair manner, with a reduced risk of harmful co-channel interference.

We believe that the proposed approach would greatly facilitate the coexistence of C-V2X and 802.11p at 5.9 GHz, and we would encourage stakeholders to further develop this proposal and come to a speedy agreement on this for the benefit of the European ITS industry as a whole.

Read the full paper here.

The 5G Automotive Association announced today the election of its new Board members following the General Assembly held on May 11, 2017. Continuing members AUDI AG, BMW Group, China Mobile, Daimler AG, Ericsson, Ford, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, SAIC Motor, Vodafone Group and Qualcomm Incorporated will be joined by AT&T, Jaguar Land Rover, NTT DOCOMO and Samsung Electronics.

The election of AT&T, Jaguar Land Rover, NTT DOCOMO and Samsung Electronics as Board members will strengthen the position of 5GAA as a global, cross-industry association of automotive, technology and telecommunications companies. It reflects the diversity of 5GAA’s membership, both in terms of geographical spread and expertise.

The Chairperson is Christoph Voigt (Audi) and the Vice Chairperson is Thierry Klein (Nokia), both elected to their second term. The Board of the Association renewed the mandate of the outgoing Executive Committee: Dino Flore (Qualcomm) will continue to serve as Director General, Markus Dillinger (Huawei) as Secretary, and Fathi Arafat Husein El-Dwaik (BMW) as Treasurer. The Board also confirmed the appointment of elected Working Groups Chairs and Vice-Chairs.

“We are very pleased that AT&T, Jaguar Land Rover, NTT DOCOMO and Samsung Electronics have joined the 5GAA Board,” said Christoph Voigt, Chairman of the 5GAA Board. “With their global footprint and diverse expertise, they will contribute to further connect communication and the automotive industry to develop end-to-end solutions for future mobility and transportation services.”

The 5G Automotive Association has become a Market Representation Partner (MRP) in 3GPP, bringing in the influence and expertise of vehicle manufacturers and a variety of important companies from the automotive sector, to the 3GPP environment. Dino Flore, Director General of 5GAA, was present at the 3GPP Organizational Partner’s meeting in West Palm Beach on April 26, to complete the signing of the Partnership Agreement.

The 5GAA application for 3GPP MRP status stated “It is important to connect the telecom industry and vehicle manufacturers, to develop end-to-end solutions for future mobility and transportation services” Dino Flore told the 3GPP OP meeting “The access part is vitally important and we will work on that with 3GPP. In addition to that, we will look at the other pieces required – including the work on upper layers (SDOs including ETSI-ITS, ISO, SAE and IEEE) and security aspects – to develop the system as a whole.”

The work is ongoing in 3GPP, with an initial version of the V2X access specifications in Release 14 and active discussions to define next generation V2X capabilities on-going. Susan Miller (3GPP OP Chair, ATIS President and CEO) welcomed 5GAA as a partner and noted the positive effect that Dino Flore’s vast experience in the 3GPP leadership, most recently as the RAN Chairman, will have for the successful integration of the 5GAA into the 3GPP family. Ms. Miller said “5GAA is bringing in the needs of a key vertical at an important time for the project.”

“5G will be much more than mobile broadband connectivity, it will cover a variety of use-cases and industries” Dino Flore, DG 5GAA.

The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) submitted comments to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), “Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; V2V Communications.” The proposed rule is to mandate new light-duty vehicles to be equipped with dedicated short range communications (DSRC).

The 5GAA is a new global cross-industry association of automotive, technology and telecommunications companies and includes 42 members, of which 8 are founding members (AUDI AG, BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm). Our mission is to enable communications solutions that address society’s connected mobility and road safety needs.

In our submission, 5GAA applauds the concept behind the rule, as V2V safety is important to our technology deployment mission. 5GAA urges NHTSA to not consider just the best technology of today, but also to consider the best technologies of tomorrow. Such an approach will promote innovation and competitive market-based outcomes, ensuring that American drivers and passengers benefit from the best and most advanced safety solutions available as technology evolves. Rigid technology mandates such as specifying DSRC, whether direct or de facto, freeze technology solutions to a past point in time. NS will significantly impede the innovation and evolution path for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) safety, and positions the US to lag behind the rest of the world in V2V communications specifically as well as V2X broadly. 5GAA elaborates on the following points:

Similar to DSRC, Cellular-V2X technology for V2V safety can transmit BSM in an ad hoc manner without cellular network coverage.

Cellular-V2X technology for V2V safety communications can operate without a SIM card and offers the tools to adopt, evolve or innovate any privacy-preserving security management system including SCRM.

Cellular-V2X technology for V2V safety benefits from a significantly larger link budget than DSRC (e.g., 8 dB at high speeds), corresponding to twice the range of DSRC and higher reliability.
Cellular-V2X technology for V2V safety can support up to 50 messages per second with less than 20 msec latency.

Cellular-V2X enables V2V, and for that matter Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I), Vehicle-to-Pedestrian (V2P) and Vehicle-to-Network (V2N), safety applications to take advantage of the widespread cellular network coverage in the US.

5GAA notes also that the impending launch of 5G will only widen the performance gap between Cellular- V2X and DSRC.

5GAA believes that Rather than moving forward with the proposed regulation, NHTSA should instead undertake an updated, comprehensive technology neutral analysis of V2V solutions, including DSRC and Cellular-V2X, against the performance requirements in the NPRM. If this review indicates that regulatory action is necessary, the U.S. Department of Transportation should move forward with a technology neutral regulation that sets forth minimum V2V safety performance requirements only.

The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) supports the goal of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to increase motor vehicle safety through the use of communications solutions. 5GAA is a new global cross-industry association of automotive, technology and telecommunications companies. 5GAA includes 42 members, of which 8 are founding members (AUDI AG, BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm). Our mission is to enable communications solutions that address society’s connected mobility and road safety needs.

5GAA, like the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), values safety first and foremost; this is what makes the immediate proceeding so important to us and why we are moved to offer the sum of our expertise in providing comments. To realize the full safety benefits of vehicle communications, NHTSA’s guiding principle must be one that allows for not only the best technology of today but also for the best technologies of tomorrow. Such an approach will promote innovation and competitive market-based outcomes, ensuring that American drivers and passengers benefit from the best and most advanced safety solutions available as technology evolves. This is particularly essential for regulations touching the communications industry, which has witnessed rapid technological innovation over the past two decades – with 4G cellular prevalent today and 5G on the horizon. By contrast, rigid technology mandates, whether direct or de facto, freeze technology solutions to a past point in time. With the communications market rapidly evolving, any technology NHTSA mandates today will be outdated by the time the mandate goes into effect, if not already outdated. This will significantly impede the innovation and evolution path for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) safety, and positions the US to lag behind the rest of the world in V2V communications specifically as well as V2X broadly.

For this reason, 5GAA respectfully cannot support the proposed V2V technology mandate predicated on the use of dedicated short-range radio communications (DSRC), a technology originally designed in the 1990s. The proposed direct technology-specific mandate, by definition, is on its face not technology neutral.  Similarly, the one-way interoperability requirement in the alternate “if equipped” proposal, where “alternative” technologies would be required to be backwards interoperable with DSRC, is flawed in that it would impose no reverse interoperability requirement on DSRC to ensure backwards interoperability with other technology solutions, including today’s Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (Cellular-V2X) solutions for V2V safety.

In effect, the “path” for compliance is not a path at all, but instead a dead-end for other technologies, as it creates a non-level playing field in the US V2V market.The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) supports the goal of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to increase motor vehicle safety through the use of communications solutions. 5GAA is a new global cross-industry association of automotive, technology and telecommunications companies.

5GAA includes 42 members, of which 8 are founding members (AUDI AG, BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm). Our mission is to enable communications solutions that address society’s connected mobility and road safety needs.5GAA, like the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), values safety first and foremost; this is what makes the immediate proceeding so important to us and why we are moved to offer the sum of our expertise in providing comments. To realize the full safety benefits of vehicle communications, NHTSA’s guiding principle must be one that allows for not only the best technology of today but also for the best technologies of tomorrow. Such an approach will promote innovation and competitive market-based outcomes, ensuring that American drivers and passengers benefit from the best and most advanced safety solutions available as technology evolves. This is particularly essential for regulations touching the communications industry, which has witnessed rapid technological innovation over the past two decades – with 4G cellular prevalent today and 5G on the horizon. By contrast, rigid technology mandates, whether direct or de facto, freeze technology solutions to a past point in time. With the communications market rapidly evolving, any technology NHTSA mandates today will be outdated by the time the mandate goes into effect, if not already outdated. This will significantly impede the innovation and evolution path for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) safety, and positions the US to lag behind the rest of the world in V2V communications specifically as well as V2X broadly.

For this reason, 5GAA respectfully cannot support the proposed V2V technology mandate predicated on the use of dedicated short-range radio communications (DSRC), a technology originally designed in the 1990s. The proposed direct technology-specific mandate, by definition, is on its face not technology neutral. Similarly, the one-way interoperability requirement in the alternate “if equipped” proposal, where “alternative” technologies would be required to be backwards interoperable with DSRC, is flawed in that it would impose no reverse interoperability requirement on DSRC to ensure backwards interoperability with other technology solutions, including today’s Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (Cellular-V2X) solutions for V2V safety. In effect, the “path” for compliance is not a path at all, but instead a dead-end for other technologies, as it creates a non-level playing field in the US V2V market.

Read the full paper here.

The Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) took a “concrete” step in its strategy to focus on vertical industries by signing a MoU with the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) at the GTI Summit 2017 (read more).

The 5G Automotive Alliance (5GAA) and the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance have announced to strengthen their relationship and to foster a closer cooperation in the area of 5G-based V2X solutions.

 

(Barcelona, February 27, 2017). The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) and the European Automotive Telecom Alliance (EATA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The aim of this partnership is to foster cooperation in the field of connected and autonomous driving solutions as well as standardisation, spectrum and related use cases.

The 5GAA and EATA are dedicated to prioritising the use cases identified by the two organisations in order to identify the technical requirements that need to be addressed, both in the short and in the long term. In order to better support standards for connected and automated driving, standardisation prioritisation for standards bodies such as ETSI, 3GPP and SAE International is necessary as well.

It’s beyond dispute that promoting spectrum-related issues (V2X), agreement on usage modalities of certain bands, security, and privacy, as well as vehicle safety requirements to be supported by both mobile network operators (MNOs) and vehicle manufacturers (OEMs) will need to be addressed jointly. Last but not least, the agreement between MNOs and OEMs is also key to developing business models and aligning the timelines of both industries.

The 5GAA includes 33 members, of which 8 are founding members (AUDI AG, BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia and Qualcomm Incorporated). The 5GAA is a multi-industry association to develop, test and promote communications solutions, initiate their standardization and accelerate their commercial availability and global market penetration to address the societal need. Focus areas are the development, testing and promotion of communications solutions, the initiation of their standardization and the acceleration of their commercial availability and global market penetration to address society’s connected mobility and road safety needs with applications such as autonomous driving, ubiquitous access to services and integration into smart city and intelligent transportation.

EATA is comprised of six leading associations and 38 companies at present, including telecom operators, vendors, automobile manufacturers and suppliers for both cars and trucks. The main objective of the Alliance is to promote the wide deployment of hybrid connectivity for connected and automated driving in Europe. EATA’s first concrete step is the advancement of a ‘pre-deployment project’ aimed at testing the performance of hybrid communication required for automated driving under real traffic situations.

Furthermore, EATA seeks to identify and address service and technology roadmaps, safety and security
needs, as well as regulatory and business issues. The project will tackle cross-border interoperability, including digital and physical infrastructure, as well as vehicle localisation issues.

“The revolution that connected and automated driving is going to bring about at the societal level is already shaping Europe’s automotive and telecoms sectors at a rapid pace. This Memorandum of Understanding with the 5GAA not only brings the different industry partners closer together but also reinforces the European Commission’s strategy on cooperative, connected and automated mobility that was launched at the end of 2016. Car connectivity and automation will require a mix of communications technologies, but it is clear that 5G technology can become a key enabler of Europe’s digital highways. Together, EATA and 5GAA will contribute to reinventing the driving experience.”

Erik Jonnaert, Chairman of the EATA Steering Committee

“5GAA was created to connect telecom industry and vehicle manufacturers to develop end-to-end solutions for future mobility and transportation services. We look forward to working with EATA to define the requirements of C-V2X and to create a successful V2X ecosystem.”

Christoph Voigt, Chairman of the 5GAA Board

On the February 9th members of the 5GAA Board traveled to Silicon Valley to introduce 5GAA and describe their joint vision of cellular communications for automotive applications. The objective of the event was to engage a diverse group representing Silicon Valley-based companies in the discussion of how the 5GAA vision may match the culture and innovation of the local ecosystem.

On this occasion, 5GAA hosted the event at the Four Season in Palo Alto, sponsored by Intel, with a panel on “Driving to the Future: The Case for Cellular in Automotive”. Panelists included Jovan Zagajac (Ford), Luke Ibbetson (Vodafone Group), Walter Weigel (Huawei), Thierry Klein (Nokia) and Michael Faerber (Intel), and the discussion was moderated by Jim Misener(Qualcomm).

The audience included representatives from automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers with offices in Silicon Valley, chipmakers, telecommunications research and development personnel, transportation providers, university researchers and several startups.

The discussion was productive and covered a wide range of questions and answers which needed to be addressed. Also discussed was the value of cellular for the automotive and transportation value chain, 3GPP’s release of 14 features and how they are able to transform them to 5G. Also explored in the meeting was how invention and innovation are part of both the panelist and the audience group. The event was well attended by over 40 people who contributed to a very lively debate, it was the first event of its kind organized by 5GAA.