On June 23, with the successful launch of the last BeiDou navigation satellite, China's BeiDou navigation system completed its full deployment.
At present, in the civilian field, the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) accounted for about 90% of the market share. This dominance is particularly obvious the automotive field.
With the gradual development of smart grid-connected cars and smart highway concepts, BeiDou will provide users with all-weather, high-precision GPS navigation timing services, satellite-based enhancement, traffic planning, precision single-point positioning after the completion of comprehensive commissioning in the future.
BeiDou will gradually capture the domestic automotive market in the field of navigation.
Helping the development of automatic driving industry
In 2018, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology pointed out that smart grid-connected cars are one of the three major directions in China's process of building a world automotive powerhouse. China is also going to deeply integrate automotive and electronics and other industries into a new automotive industry form, breakthrough key technologies, and jointly promote the Smart Internet-connected car industry development.
With the rise of smart grid-connected car technology, automatic driving has become an essential part of the development of the smart grid-connected car industry.
As a key function of the car that every car company is competing to develop, it is divided into six levels: L0, L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5, according to the automatic driving level.
Today's technical research results in the field of automatic driving show that most car companies are still at the L2 stage, while L3 is still at the experimental stage and has not yet been fully put into the consumer market.
Automated driving requires extremely high computing power on the chip, requiring the processor to be able to handle millions of calculations per second.
It requires a high degree of real-time performance on the road surface, with an average car at 60 km/h, one kilometer per minute. At 1,000 meters, traveling 16.666 meters per second, any little delay could put the vehicle in a dangerous situation.
In the visual distance perception range, LIDAR detects up to 200 meters, millimeter wave radar detects up to about 250 meters, and cameras detect up to 150 meters.
Currently, radar has more detection noise and is prone to misjudgment. So the combination of radar and camera, automatic driving perception hardware is usually the main camera, radar is supplemented.
However, the camera is susceptible to the influence of the weather and line of sight obstruction, to solve the auto driving state in the cold and hot, wind and rain in the case of safe driving has become the focus, the difficulty.
Although many models are now equipped with perception radar, camera, car chip have reached the L4 level, without centimeter-level navigation and positioning capabilities and long-range situational awareness, full-speed automatic driving is also difficult to land.
Therefore, the realization of automatic driving needs a breakthrough: centimeter-level navigation and positioning, environmental perception, decision control, and path planning, which are the four key technologies that need to rely on BeiDou technology.
BeiDou navigation satellites have the following functions: precise positioning, centimeter-level navigation, timing, ground-based enhancement, and other functions in one.
It is also unaffected by the environment and weather, which will play a decisive role in the future breakthrough from L3 level high autopilot, L4 level ultra-high autopilot, and L5 level fully automated driving delay and precise positioning.
BeiDou high-precision positioning technology, based on the high-precision positioning services provided by the BeiDou ground-based augmentation system, and combined with inertial guidance and other technologies, can provide automatic driving vehicles with position and attitude perception information.
When conditions arise on the road ahead of the vehicle, BeiDou's satellites will be able to anticipate and send information to the vehicle in advance, which, combined with the vehicle's own computing power, will ensure the high accuracy and reliability of the navigation information, thus enabling intelligent control of the autonomous vehicle.
There is no doubt that when BeiDou's high-precision technology matures and is applied to the intelligent driving industry, it will speed up the rapid landing of L3 and L4 level automated driving, and in a broader sense, it will also promote the breakthrough and landing of L5 level fully automated driving.
BeiDou+5G
5G technology, as one of the emerging industries strongly developed and supported by the policy, 5G transmission speed can theoretically reach hundreds of times as much as 4G speed (several 10 Gbps).
As early as 2016, China has already released the roadmap for the future development of smart grid-connected vehicles, and the roadmap divides it into three stages, all of which are related to vehicle-road collaboration.
At present we released 5G standard technology is still mainly doing broadband, how to improve transmission rates, at this stage BeiDou and 5G are still in a mutually independent, separate situation.
In the future, BeiDou+5G will join hands to jointly empower road and rail collaboration, which will also become a key development goal in China in the next phase.
Although theoretically with the advantage of the number of 5G base stations, through the deployment of 5G systems on the side of the road or road information awareness, it is possible to achieve information interoperability between vehicles and roads.
At the same time, the road is graded, so as to achieve a richer and more comprehensive intelligent network with the ability to sense information, to achieve comprehensive communications network coverage of the road, and even rely on 5G can in some specific scenarios through the road information for the vehicle itself to make decisions.
However, the high cost of 5G base station construction, in the face of the existing domestic highway conditions, the cost of achieving comprehensive vehicle-road coordination is still uncontrollable.
In the field of vehicle-road collaboration, the digitalization of environment is an important way to realize vehicle-road collaboration and improve travel experience, however, there are still many problems in the human, vehicle, road and network parts of vehicle-road collaboration.
According to the existing 5G technology, the integrated automotive systems and module solutions are still far from realizing the dual integration of 5G+BeiDou, let alone directly used for roadway collaboration.
Particularly in certain scenarios, such as intelligent transportation and smart cars, including driverless solutions for smart cities, a more integrated BeiDou+5G integrated terminal is needed.
How will the mutual empowerment of BeiDou and 5G affect automated driving and vehicle-road collaboration?
A ground-based augmentation system is most important for the realization of the integrated terminal, and when the smart car receives satellite signals from the sky, it also needs to receive error information from the ground-based augmentation system.
Only through the integration of these two systems can accurate positioning be realized, and accurate positioning can also be realized in most areas of the country, including all highways, to ensure that the road can receive reliable, stable and highly accurate positioning services at any location through the "Star-Ground Integration" service capability.
But in some scenes, such as: underground garages, tunnels and other areas where the satellite signal of intelligent driving vehicles is severely blocked, in order to achieve accurate positioning, high precision satellite positioning alone is not enough.
So with 5G technology, the vehicle and road perception situation can be quickly transmitted to BeiDou satellite, through BeiDou centimeter-level precision positioning to achieve indoor and outdoor integrated coordinate continuity and positioning.
Some of the information can also be transmitted to the intelligent driving vehicle via V2X and maintain the range and distance of the intelligent driving perception.
In some specific road sections, the number of 5G base stations and satellite interference will be limited, so the best way to ensure redundancy and anti-jamming capability is to face these situations.
The BeiDou system is an important time and space navigation facility newly built in China, and 5G is a transmission technology that must be developed in the current intelligent era.
When BeiDou+5G is widely used commercially in the automotive industry, it will be characterized by extremely low latency, high speed, high transmission and high precision navigation.
The two will be able to integrate and empower each other in smart grid-connected vehicles and roadway collaboration, as well as obtain advance warning information and take evasive measures for intelligent vehicles, greatly reducing the risk of traffic accidents.
Conclusion
With the completion of the deployment of the last global networking satellite of BeiDou 3, the era of transformation and upgrading of the automotive industry has arrived through collaboration with 5G.
The completion of smart grid-connected vehicles and urban intelligent transportation networks will also be accelerated, and the collaboration between the two will clearly have a disruptive impact on the automotive sector.
BeiDou's high-precision positioning is a key underlying technology for smart grid-connected vehicle sensing and high-precision map acquisition. The auto industry is closely integrated to support the rapid development of China's intelligent networked vehicle industry.
The combination of 5G and BeiDou will also bring more convenience and possibilities to public life and travel, while leveraging the trillion-dollar connected car market.
