A 5G connected car trial by Ericsson, SK Telecom and BMW Group Korea has used beamforming and beam tracking to hit 3.6GBps transmission speeds.
The speed was achieved for a car moving at 170km per hour using four base stations that transmitted signals that followed the vehicle, switching the signal between the nearer base station as the vehicle moved.
The trial managed to achieve throughput of 1.5Gbps while transmission was switched between the base stations.
The companies built the world’s largest mmWave 5G trial network in the 28GHz band to carry out the test. The demonstration took place at the BMW driving centre on Yeongjong Island, Korea.
Improved connectivity of this kind will allow improved performance and reliability for connected car applications such as image recognition, vehicle-to-vehicle communications and communications between cars and traffic lights or surveillance cameras, according to the telcos.
Connected car trials are taking place throughout the world.Â
In November, it was announced that Ericsson and BMW would work with German operators including Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica and Vodafone to build a test track for researching and developing 5G in an initiative called the 5G-ConnectedMobility consortium.
Ericsson and BMW have joined with all three operators in Germany to establish a cross-industry consortium to build a 30-kilometre long test track to research and develop 5G infrastructure and applications for cars and trains.
The new ‘5G-ConnectedMobility’ consortium comprises Ericsson, BMW, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, Vodafone, the Technical University of Dresden (TUD), the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt), and the Federal Regulatory Agency (BNetzA).
Last July, operators and car manufacturers unveiled plans to launch a large scale pre-deployment trial of connected and automated driving.
The first phase of the test is launching in 2017 and will last until 2019, focusing on LTE. The second phase will launch in 2019 and last two years, concentrating on LTE and 5G.
Research by IHS Markit has suggested that 2020 will be a watershed for the connected car industry, with almost half of vehicles on the roads, as well as 55 percent of new vehicles, set to be connected.