It’s enough to make Britain’s commuters weep: while many of us are wondering why 4G phones have trouble sustaining a connection, trials in Tokyo have given a hint of what the future could bring.
A consortium of companies have demonstrated high-quality, high-speed video being delivered to a moving vehicle.
NTT Docomo, working in partnership with Toyota, Ericsson and Intel has demonstrated data speeds of 1Gbps for 4K-resolution video communications with a vehicle traveling at 30 km/h.
This trial conducted along Tokyo's Odaiba waterfront on November 2 involved a moving vehicle mounted with an Intel GOTM 5G Automotive Platform terminal and equipped with a compact on-board antenna head designed for connected car trials.
Traveling through a 5G trial environment, constructed by Docomo, using multiple Ericsson base stations and Cloud-RAN, the vehicle successfully streamed the video at data speeds of up to 1Gbps downlink/600Mbps uplink. The companies claimed that it showed the full possibilities of 5G, including the ultra-high speed data rates and extra-low latency.
Further trials
Further trials will be conducted in cooperation with Ericsson, Intel and Toyota to test the practicality of services for 5G-connected cars and other applications. The consortium claimed the trial was the first 5G multi-vendor interoperability trial involving a device within a vehicle.
The technology will be demonstrated at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Tokyo from November 9 to 11 as part of Docomo R&D Open House 2017.
The companies aren’t stopping there. The NTT Group and Toyota have also agreed to collaborate in the research and development of an ICT platform for 5G-connected cars.
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