Engineered using a high-capacity, low-latency Private LTE network, the Rouen Normandy Autonomous Lab project is one of the latest autonomous transport services to be deployed on open roads in Europe.
Cars driving on the highway
The robust, agile and secure performance characteristics of LTE and 5G networks continue to drive the advancement of intelligent, autonomous transport solutions – enabled through critical mobile broadband services and low-latency vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
At Mobile World Congress 2019, Ericsson and Transdev are announcing their collaboration for the Rouen Normandy Autonomous Lab (RNAL) project as the first on-demand shared and autonomous transport service on open roads in Europe. The RNAL project enables autonomous operation of four ZOEs Renault and, soon, an i-Cristal Transdev – Lohr shuttle.
Ericsson, an associate partner of the RNAL project, ensures the secure and seamless operation of the use case through the deployment of a private high-speed LTE wireless network infrastructure. The network, which will be live in March 2019, interconnects different parts of the Autonomous Transport System – ATS by Transdev: the autonomous vehicles, the connected infrastructure (sensors, LIDAR) and the supervision in the operating control center. The private network infrastructure operates in three different 3GPP frequency bands (in the 2600 MHz range) and offers LTE network data speeds of 80 Mbit/s in downlink and 29 Mbit/s in uplink.
Franck Bouétard, Head of Ericsson France, says: “The cooperation with Transdev is a great opportunity for us to explore industry requirements towards 5G, using our critical mobile broadband solutions to deliver new customer experience as part of this exceptional autonomous vehicle project, unique in Europe. Our Private LTE networks significantly improve communications by providing secure and scalable new mobile broadband services.”
Yann Leriche, CEO of Transdev North America & Head of Autonomous Transport Systems, says: “The deployment and live operation of this Ericsson Private LTE network is key for Transdev to enable reliable, high-performance, and secure communications within the ATS by Transdev. I am particularly pleased with the reliability and the quality of the communications ensured within this unique project on the European scene. As an operator, we at Transdev are today, and will be tomorrow, responsible for passenger safety, service quality and strive to provide the best customer experience.”
Ericsson and Transdev intend to explore future cooperation projects and are currently investigating next steps for future autonomous vehicle experiments and commercial networks.
Find out more about autonomous transport by exploring Ericsson’s self-driving vehicle use cases.
Read our recent Ericsson Technology Review article to find out why distributed cloud will be key to future autonomous transport.
Join or follow Ericsson at MWC 2019 in Barcelona from February 25 to 28 and experience the future of 5G and IoT innovation.
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