NXP Fully Supports Publication of Delegated Act on C-ITS

If you followed the discussions on the “Delegated Act” on Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) you probably noticed the EU Commission has finally published the regulation after years of debate. The Delegated Act is based on the ITS Directive 2010/40 EU which defines requirements for C-ITS stations and services.

As global #1 automotive semiconductor supplier and the largest European semiconductor company¹, NXP is excited about this news.  We are convinced that the Delegated Act is a crucial step towards safer roads and greener mobility, as it accelerates the adoption of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology. We are urging the co-legislators European Parliament and Council to support the Delegated Act in order to enable swift roll-out of C-ITS technology on European roads.

Why so?

Clear Technology Investments for Automakers
First of all, this Delegated Act provides clarity around the technology to be used by carmakers. It defines a hybrid approach, endorsing the ITS-G5 standard, also known as IEEE 802.11p or DSRC, as the baseline technology for direct vehicle-to-vehicle communication while using complementary 4G and 5G cellular technology for longer range communication to infrastructure and cloud services. The industry can now safely invest. It allows carmakers to start line-fitting C-ITS technology into their cars so consumers can benefit from it and road fatalities can be reduced significantly in the very near future already.

Adaptable to Future Proven Advancements
Second, the Delegated Act supports a multi-technology approach. While the current technology for vehicle-to-vehicle communication is ITS-G5, there is provision for new technologies to be adopted once they are mature and sufficiently field tested. The current ITS-G5 technology has been maturing for the past years, including first series production deployment already in the United States, followed by a large EU carmaker who will line fit ITS-G5 by end of 2019.

Interoperability,  Backwards Compatibility and Continuity
Third and furthermore, the Delegated Act ensures that any new ITS applications and services would need to be interoperable, backwards compatible and guarantee continuity with ITS-G5-based technology. The Delegated Act avoids the risk of having a future patchwork of diverging, non-interoperable solutions that significantly hampers road safety improvements. This is essential, as all cars that over time will be equipped with C-ITS technology need to be able to “talk to each other”, regardless of the communication standard. This ad hoc communication ability is what makes the driving safer.

NXP also has been involved in the evaluation of alternative standards for C-ITS, such as LTE-Vehicular (LTE-V) or Cellular-V2X (C-V2X). While cellular technology potentially could offer improved performance (moving to 5G-New Radio) and is often positioned as doing so already now, this does not materialise in the 4G Rel-14 standard of 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) to be used for Day-1 safety use cases. This was recently partly confirmed by the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA). The test results in the V2X Functional and Performance Test Report; Test Procedures and Results, published in October 2018, contained inaccurate information, as receive antenna diversity was not used. NXP appreciates that this was clarified in a formal letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

NXP strongly believes in the potential of ITS-G5 deployment for safety, augmented with 4G and 5G cellular connections in the future. Cellular connections can provide convenience use cases to consumers who are able to afford the monthly charges for that. It must be evident to all consumers in EU that the basic safety features are free of additional cellular charges.

In conclusion, NXP is convinced that the Delegated Act will enable carmakers to quickly adopt ITS-G5 technology in the EU market and start saving lives on our roads! It also offers new and mature technologies swift access to the market, allowing them to keep up with technological progress.

¹ Source: Strategy Analytics 2017

Authors

Kees Moerman

Kees Moerman received his MSc in Physics and Computer Science in 1990 at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. He has 30+ years of experience in embedded systems and (signal) processors, especially in the domain of communications. He worked as chief architect, innovation manager and MT member in departments of several larger and smaller semiconductor companies, leading multi-domain specialist teams in the area of SoC communication systems. His current work is in the Automotive System Innovations group of NXP Semiconductors, on various communication technologies linked to Smart Mobility.

Rob Hoeben

Rob Hoeben, senior director of NXP's V2X business and NXP system architect, Kees Moerman, work in close collaboration to deploy NXP's V2X modem systems for a safer and greener world.