Next week at a special event in Paris, car makers and partners will showcase the first applications of Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) in the automotive industry. They will also demo, for the first time, on-the-road 5G-V2X Direct, where vehicles directly share sensor data on the road in real time.
The demos are being hosted by 5GAA, which is an industry body that brings together vehicle OEMs with the telco industry, as well as other ecosystem partners. 5GAA has been looking at NTN use cases since it started initial work in 2022. Its vision for NTN is that it can provide complementary extension of permanent gaps in terrestrial coverage, and also provide temporary coverage at times of disruption and disaster. A roadmap produced by the body in September 2024 expects to see commercial NTN-enabled services in the market in 2027.
Paris demonstrations
Four demonstrations will show in-vehicle NTN. BMW, T-Mobile, Anritsu and Jember will lead a demo of safety use cases, using satellite connectivity from Viasat. There will also be a demo of narrowband connectivity with Stellantis, Cubic and Vedecom, with IoT connectivity from Skylo. Harman will test its TCU with Qualcomm NTN connectivity, along with Rohde & Schwarz. And LG, Anritsu and Cubic will test out other NTN use cases.
There will also be static demos showing field measurements from Anritsu, an NGeCall over NTN from Keysight and 5G NTN device testing with Mediatek and Rohde & Schwarz. These are intended to show that the ecosystem is ready and can be demonstrated today.
Olaf Eckart, BMW’s Senior Expert Cooperations R&D, said that with connectivity becoming more and more important to operators “no connectivity is not an option”. A document published by the 5GAA in September 2024 set out a roadmap for the future deployment of NTN use case and spectrum requirements.
“Our key message is that satellite comms must be integrated with terrestrial networks based on 3GPP,” he said. The most relevant spectrum bands are in Sub 6GHz, in NB-IoT and in 5G NR NTN, and for existing terrestrial network devices to be re-used with only “reasonable modification.”
BMW will showcase how narrowband NTN can complement terrestrial 4G and 5G in the future by showing hazard warnings and an emergency messaging use case by satellite.
The demos will show how hazard warnings and emergency use cases can be perceived, and how to initiate emegency call messages. They will also show how connectivity can switch between terrestrial and NTN.
Viasat is providing its L-Band network for the demos. Tim Daly, Vice President of Sales and Business Development, said that seamless connectivity between NTN and terrestrial networks would enable OEMs to access connectivity wherever it is needed. “We see it as a phased rollout, starting with narrowband and transitioning to Wideband as the technology an standards develop. This is a true ecosystem play, between traditional satellite partners, telcos and OEMs, to make sure we have a business model that will drive adoption and success.”
V2X Direct
A second clutch of demos will show device to device connectivity, using the PC5 interface in 3GPP. 5G V2X direct communications will allow devices to communicate directly with other devices over a relatively short range – less than 1km.
The Paris event will show the first on-road and in-traffic demonstration of a capability to share sensor information from one car to another. Vaelo and Marben will demo the ability for one car to inform another of the presence of a pedestrian that is obscured from the second car.
The demo shows 5G-V2X Direct connectivity so that as a pedestrian crosses the street, the connected vehicle is able to capture the scene, process the data and send it the information to the second vehicle.
V2N demonstrations
A third set of demos will show how cars can interact with mobile networks (V2N) to enable use cases such as hazard warnings and traffic management at distance of over 1km.
This will include a demo of a connected intersection, and use cases such as protection of vulnerable road users and traffic management. the 5GAA architecture enables V2X message exchange across mobile network operator’s’ platform. Over a private network provided by Nokia and operated by Orange, additional features such as a Quality on Demand API will also be enabled.
A demo with Harman and ublox will show how V2N connectivity can be used send an alert to cars when a vehicle further up the road has activated emergency braking. The demo sends near real-time alerts via the network to other cars in the same traffic flow.
Florence Gagnepain, Head of Industry and Connected Transports, Orange, said that the demo would show how network APIs would allow partners to interact at scale with 5G networks, for use cases such as vulnerable road user protection, bi-directional alerts, and sharing information on dynamic objects. She added that 4G and 5G coverage would be good enough to provide the coverage and service levels required for these safety services.
