Toronto, Ontario — August 28, 2019 — As vehicles slowly but surely gain more autonomy, attention falls on how current network infrastructures will support the vehicles as they gain mainstream popularity. 4G networks may just not be enough.
AVs are already using hundreds of sensors, gathering massive amounts of data every moment they are on the road. On today’s networks, AVs are constantly broadcasting their speed, location, and direction of travel. Their capabilities are limited but are predicted to only improve from here.
Future vehicles are said will be able to communicate with each other so effortlessly through 5G networks that they will be able to safely from into ‘platoons,’ or links that group travelling vehicles together closely to form high-efficiency trains. Stefan Solyom, a technical specialist for Volvo, predicts that these platoons will gain 20 percent better fuel economy.
“There is a limit where it is not worth it to follow closer because the fuel economy benefit you get from the aerodynamics, you lose from the actuation of acceleration and braking,” he said.
Current AVs, with varying amounts of autonomy, use on average around 25 gigabytes of data per hour. Dr. Joy Laskar, CTO Silicon Valley’s Maja Systems, predicts that future AVs will generate almost 2 million gigabits of data or up to 5,100 TB of data per year.
“With an advanced Wi-Fi connection, it will take 230 days to transfer a week-worth of data from a self-driving car, and that is why we need much faster ASIC processing technology and products,” she said.
Wireless network companies are expected to invest around $26 billion into 5G network infrastructure, according to a 2018 report by Accenture. 5G networks are set to be deployed in Canada between 2020 and 2026.
