How much do you know about the application of wireless technology in cars?

Many interesting technologies are used in cars. Especially after the cars become intelligent and electrified, many domestic cars are at the forefront of global car companies in terms of technological applications, such as wireless devices in cars. This has great potential in the AI ​​era and is expected to greatly change our travel experience in the next five to ten years. Autonomous driving, AI cars, etc. will follow.

For cars, the Internet of Everything means using the electronic equipment on board, mobile communication technology, car navigation systems and information network platforms to connect cars to roads, cars to cars, people and infrastructure in the city in real time. This also includes communication between devices inside the car, and the hardware foundation of all this is the wireless devices inside the car.

Part 1

Wireless technology applications in cars

From the perspective of functional technical application, the wireless technology equipment in the car can be simply divided into two types: communication outside the car and communication inside the car.

◎ Applications of in-vehicle communications: keyless entry systems (such as PEPS, UWB), in-vehicle entertainment (including Bluetooth connection, hotspot connection), tire pressure monitoring, mobile phone wireless charging, millimeter wave radar perception, etc.

◎ Communication applications outside the car: car satellite navigation, combined inertial navigation, V2I communication and V2V communication. The most important of these is the car networking unit on the car.

Part 2‍

Internet of Vehicles Technology

If mobile phone networking is mainly about connecting mobile phones together, car networking, in addition to connecting cars, also needs to connect more through wireless technology:

◎ V2V: Vehicle to Vehicle

◎ V2P: Vehicle to Pedestrian

◎ V2R: Vehicle to Road

◎ V2I: Vehicle to Infrastructure

◎ V2N: Vehicle to Network

◎ V2C: Vehicle to Cloud

The processing of this information is usually done by the car networking control unit, which is a processor installed in the car to control and track the car status. Taking Tesla's design as an example, if you take apart Tesla's cockpit controller, you will find that its car networking module has been integrated with the entire entertainment host and automatic assisted driving system.

Tesla's cockpit controller uses Qualcomm's communication chip SA415M, which supports LTE networks and is compatible with UMTS and GSM networks (4G and 3G networks). This allows the car to communicate even in places not covered by 5G signals.

This chip also supports various satellite signals (GNSS, PPE (RTK), Qualcomm dead reckoning (QDR 3.0), and can provide accurate and reliable positioning capabilities.

If our roads and infrastructure are equipped with similar communication modules (the functions do not need to be so powerful), then cars and these facilities can stay in touch with each other and obtain more information needed for driving.

For most traditional car companies, the integration level of this part of functions has not reached the level of Tesla. For example, Mercedes-Benz's T-box can represent the design of traditional vehicle companies - traditional car companies often make a separate controller to handle the functions required by the Internet of Vehicles.

It is worth mentioning that compared to Tesla, which uses Qualcomm's communication chip, Mercedes-Benz chose Huawei's communication module, and its HiSilicon Balong baseband processor (Hi6932) runs the Linux system (Mercedes-Benz's T-box also has another name, HERMES, Hardware for Enhanced Remote, Mobility & Emergency Service).

Part 3

Internet of Vehicles and Smart Cars in the AI ​​Era

The public may not have noticed that car computers will play a big role as important edge computing systems in the AI ​​era.

In the AI ​​era, all data is stored in the cloud, that is, in the servers of big data providers. However, the devices we use still need a certain amount of computing power to process the data collected locally. This can improve the data transmission capacity.

A car with an Internet of Vehicles module is just such an edge system with supercomputing capabilities. Whether it is a smart cockpit or smart driving, the whole car in the AI ​​era needs a more reliable Internet of Vehicles to connect the car with the entire backend computing, making the car a truly smart car.

Mobile phones and high-speed communication networks have changed our lives in the past decade; in the next decade, AI+cars will also bring more unexpected changes in the wave of Internet changes.

Of course, we also look forward to faster development of wireless connections, such as the need for higher communication rates, stronger communication stability, and higher security. But in any case, in the wireless era of AI, the potential of smart cars cannot be underestimated.