Thanks to numerous sensors in modern vehicles, autonomous driving seems to become reality in the near future. But in order for us to be able to take control of the vehicle completely out of our hands, autonomous vehicles need additional information that goes beyond the detection range of their own sensors. The key to this is vehicle-to-everything communication (V2X). It means that vehicles network with other road users and the environment (traffic lights, cameras, roadside sensors, etc.) and cooperate, for example, by coordinating maneuvers with each other.

A prerequisite for V2X communication is reliable connectivity between road users and with the infrastructure. In the PoDIUM project, the European partners want to test and further develop the communication technologies important for this in living labs on highways as well as rural and inner-city roads. The computing and network architecture along these test routes consists, among other things, of cloud and edge servers, various sensors, and future-proof mobile radio technologies (see figure below). The interaction of the various technologies is tested here using demanding cooperative driving maneuvers.

In this project, Prof. Dr. Amr Rizk’s team is working together with Bosch, Nokia and the University of Ulm on reliable connectivity for road users. In order to establish seamlessly stable communication, they are striving for intelligent redundancy of data transmission via various mobile radio technologies (5G, 60GHz WLAN, ITS-G5). To avoid unnecessary strain on the frequency bands the researchers are developing an adaptive data transmission system that switches to the appropriate transmission channels depending on the situation. They want to test the real-life application of their development at an urban intersection in Ulm with self-driving vehicles from the University of Ulm.

*PoDIUM (PDI connectivity and cooperation enablers building trust and sustainability for CCAM) is funded by the European Commission for three years with around 9 million euros and will start on 01 October 2022. The consortium, coordinated by the Greek Institute of Communications and Computer Systems (ICCS), includes 26 partners from research, the automotive industry, the telecommunications sector and road operators.