The ongoing deployment of 5G mobile networks can enable the development of several new CCAM applications thanks to the increase of 5G network performance with respect to the previous mobile network generations. The CCAM application can exploit the large bandwidth and the reduced latency to provide innovative services related to safety and infotainment to a huge number of vehicles. Moreover, safety-related CCAM applications can leverage the softwarization of the 5G network to provide services with a higher level of reliability and with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that can enable the real implementation of services that today are only feasible as demonstrator or Proof of Concept.
The spread of CCAM applications can be fostered by the availability of flexible communication boards. Third-party developers (e.g., SMEs) can take advantage of realistic testing environments to conceive and to develop new services devoted to the automotive sector.
One of the main objectives of 5G-IANA is to provide to third-party developers an open experimentation platform that includes the availability of testing 5G communication resources. This platform comprises boards devoted to automotive communications (V2X): On-Board Unit (OBU) for enabling communication from vehicles, and Road-Side Unit (RSU) for providing communication from the roadside. The purpose is to make available 5G-enabled V2X communication boards that can provide an adequate testing environment to CCAM developers.
The flexibility of the V2X communication boards is mainly ensured by the virtualization approach that is pursued in 5G-IANA. The V2X OBU and RSU will support virtualization features to easily support the onboarding of third-party applications. Furthermore, OBU and RSU will integrate management and orchestration features making the onboarding of applications an easy and automatic process.
Developers will be further facilitated by the availability of ready to use software modules that are offered on the V2X OBU and RSU. These components are related to the provision of communication capabilities or of basic functionalities that can be exploited by several applications. The developers can avoid starting the development from scratch by leveraging these already implemented components. This approach will let the developers to focus on the implementation of new complex and advanced services. They can exploit easy to use APIs to deal with the already available software modules reducing the development time and effort.
One difficult aspect in the development of CCAM application is indeed the complexity related to the automotive specific context. The main role of the provided basic components on the V2X OBU and RSU is to hide the complexity of the automotive world and let the developers focusing on the high-level behaviour of their applications. In this way, developers don’t have to be experts on specific aspects such as the format and encoding of C-ITS messages or about the management of position and time. Moreover, the CCAM applications can exploit a reliable and secure channel since message integrity and authentication is managed by the V2X OBU and RSU implementing the secure communication compliant to the relevant ETSI standards. The V2X OBU and RSU will provide 5G Uu communication interface, and they will also offer short-reach communication capability thanks to ETSI ITS-G5 and C-V2X modems.
Authors: Daniele Brevi, Edoardo Bonetto
