Automakers have reached a fork in the road when it comes to deciding how to connect cars so that they can eventually transmit potentially life-saving safety information to each other in real time. For decades, car companies and researchers have been developing vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V in industry parlance) systems on the backbone of dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) for these time-critical messages. The federal government has even drawn up proposed regulations that would mandate the inclusion of these DSRC-based systems in all new cars. But the proposal has languished. Meanwhile, some car companies and major suppliers have been exploring how advances in cellular technology?culminating in the advent of 5G?may do the job better.
That?s subject to ongoing debate, but the efforts of believers in the burgeoning cellular route gained renewed traction this week at the 2018 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. There, two major automakers and Qualcomm, perhaps the biggest proponent of cellular, announced the latest collaborations that could shape the way the transportation industry executes communications among cars, pedestrians, and infrastructure, collectively now known as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2X) communications. While the sensors being developed for autonomous cars can only detect the road environment within their lines of sight, these V2X communications are expected to one day provide information on what lies beyond and around the corner, whether that?s icy spot...