Industry Debates DSRC Value for Car Safety With 5G En Route

DSRC will be “overruled and wiped out” by 5G communications, said Gerhard Fettweis, Vodafone Chair professor at the Dresden University of Technology. “By the time DSRC really has value, it’s going to be like five if not 10 years after it’s introduced,” he said. “Only then do you have enough penetration that you really reasonably can make use of it. So, that’s why hoping DSRC is going to make some major inroad, I think, is asking for too much.” But 5G will become widespread quickly and take on the role of supporting automotive communications, he said.

Toyota InfoTechnology Center senior researcher Gaurav Bansal strongly disagreed. The automotive sector has “done a lot of research, standardization and testing in DSRC,” Bansal said. When a human is driving, DSRC can prevent 85 percent of crashes, he said. Toyota has started deploying DSRC in Japan, and if there's a government mandate, it could start appearing in every new car in 2019 or 2020, he said. “Every year, 10 percent of the cars are new, so within five years, we can have 50 percent penetration.”

The FCC is examining sharing the 5.9 GHz spectrum between Wi-Fi and DSRC systems (see 1602050048). Earlier this month, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the automotive industry hasn’t made much use of the spectrum since getting the band in 1999, and called the 5.9 GHz band the "single best possibility in the near term for us to have more unlicensed and Wi-Fi." Bansal said Toyota is open to spectrum sharing as long as it doesn’t interfere with automotive safety communications, and the company supports joint testing between industry and the FCC. But Fettweis took another jab at DSRC’s viability. “DSRC does not save many lives, because as soon as you have plenty of cars active … you only get 75 percent coverage and the others are left out in the dark,” he said. “As soon as it’s installed everywhere, it starts flooding the network and starts killing itself with interference.”

There are big benefits to 5G compared with 4G and DSRC for automobiles, panelists said. Keysight Technologies' 5G program manager Roger Nichols said 5G provides higher message-rate and reliability, qualities that are critical to preventing crashes. NXP senior principal engineer Geoff Waters said “DSRC does not remotely touch the data rate” of 5G. For “anything on the infotainment side, anything to shut the kids up [and] give them their high-def movies in the backseat, DSRC is not the way to go.”

AT&T believes 4G still has a long life ahead even as the carrier begins 5G outdoor tests in Austin this summer, AT&T Wireless Senior Vice President-Architecture & Design Tom Keathley said in an earlier keynote. While there will be some early 5G deployments, such as at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, most larger 5G deployments will come later, post-2020 when initial standards work wraps, he said. Upcoming enhancements to 4G could lead marketers to brand it 5G, in the same way that some carriers used to market 3G HSPA+ as 4G, he said. “We’re going to be running [1 Gbps] on the [4G] LTE network. We’re going to have 10-year battery life. We’re going to have low-cost chipsets in the IoT space. … Well, 5G needs to exceed that.” AT&T believes that will happen, and that’s why it’s testing the technology, he said. “In order to make a business case, we need to have the benefits to the deployment, and 5G will have to bring those benefits. I do think it will.”