Media Column

EE Times Taiwan: 5G is Booming! Safety Should Be the Top Priority

Jan 19, 2021 Digital & Product Solutions
Author: Kilian Avilés (Senior Vice President of DEKRA Asia Pacific and Managing Director of DEKRA Taiwan)
C-V2X Is More Advantageous; Functional Safety and Cybersecurity Should be Valued
5G commercialization has been gradually deployed around the globe, and its high speed, great bandwidth and low latency will contribute hugely to the development and application of V2X.
Communication technologies are the crucial core technologies of V2X. At the moment, the 2 major V2X communication technologies are DSRC and C-V2X. DSRC was originated earlier and is the basis of the V2X technologies. However, no matter by its technology or the application of scenarios, C-V2X is more advantageous than DSRC, which has increased the speed of its commercialization. Furthermore, eCall system has been enforced by EU for all new cars sold within the EU since 2018, it definitely needs to be considered by chipset, module, component and telematics box manufacturers which would like to enter European or worldwide market.
Currently, global automotive suppliers have released L2 to L3 autonomous vehicle models, and are aiming for L4, some suppliers are even confident of developing L5 vehicles at some point in the future. Nevertheless, there are still some miles to go before L5, especially it’s not allowed that drivers’ hands are not on the steering wheel according to the present global regulations, not to mention the L5 autonomous driving, in which the vehicle can be driven without the need of any physical pilot.
With the rapid development of V2X and autonomous technologies, both of automobile and automotive electronics suppliers need to put emphasis also on functional safety of automotive electronics system and cyber security of connected cars thus ensuring the life safety of passengers.
Bizopp: C-V2X/ AR/VR/MR/ Unlicensed Bands/ IIoT/ Private Network/ LEO
The technical specifications and the future trend of 5G are mainly determined by 3GPP. Release 15 announced the start of the 5G NR and also implemented it, Release 16 was completed in July, 2020, and Release 17 is expected to be finalized within 2021. Release 15 focused on the eMBB of 5G, while Release 16 concentrated on URLLC and enhanced eMBB and mMTC. Release 17 will optimize the key features of both previous versions, and introduce higher bands (52.6 GHz~71GHz) and Low Earth Orbit Communication (LEO).
To figure out the business opportunities of 5G, we can analyze the main technical specifications from Release 15 to 17. We expect, the trend and business opportunities of 5G in 2021 will be:
  • C-V2X and ITS
  • AR/VR/MR
  • Unlicensed bands of 5G
  • IIoT
  • 5G Private Network and Wireless Factory Automation
  • The Development of LEO
  • The Research of mmWave in higher bands
Combining 5G & AI, IoT Advances by Leaps and Bounds
The IoT concept didn’t just show up in recent years, in the GSM generation, there were a bunch of companies which use SMS as the communication tool between the terminal equipment and server. However, the high cost and high power consumption of GSM modules hindered its further development. For the past few years, the communication technologies has advanced by leaps and bounds, and the material of batteries could also support wider applications of scenarios, which has given a hand to those companies which would like to enter IoT blue ocean market, to obtain profits with innovative applications .
The wireless communication technologies that are widely used by IoT can be sorted by the communication ranges: short-range communication such as NFC, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth; medium-range like 802.11x, long-range such as Sigfox, LoRa, NB-IoT, CAT M1 and the latest 5G. Manufacturers can choose the suitable communication module and integrate it to terminal products according to the applications of products. For instance, NB-IoT is mainly used by smart meter; LoRa is applied by smart city plans; Smart Home products like home appliance control system, smart lock, smart lightning, etc. usually use Bluetooth or 802.11x according to the amount of message exchanged. The appearance of 5G provides URLLC, eMBB and eMTC, couple with the intensification of AI, it’s expected that more innovative ideas will come true.