Volvo Cars and mobile operator Ericsson claim to have overcome the technical challenges of achieving seamless service continuity for vehicles on 5G networks across national borders.
As part of the EU-funded 5GCroCo project, the test at the AstaZero test track in Sweden, was set up to model and test cross-border handovers between national networks that will need to happen routinely when connected and autonomous vehicles cross from one country to another.
The 5GCroCro project is an EU initiative preparing for large-scale connected car trials along a 5G corridor between Metz in France, Merzig in Germany and Luxembourg.
The trial used 5G connectivity to ensure maps were constantly updated with the latest real-time information to aid future autonomous driving and build up an understanding of the environment beyond the range of the vehicle and its sensors.
Mikael Prytz, Research Director, Ericsson Area Networks, says, “Sharing an updated map with other cars is a latency-sensitive task and requires high network performance within and across multiple networks. During the test at the AstaZero track, we could tackle this challenge with promising results.”