About the project:

European mobility is drastically changing: growing urbanisation, environmental aspects and safety are only a few of the key indicators pointing in this direction. Road infrastructures and vehicles are blending with the digital world, becoming always-connected, automated and intelligent, delivering optimal experience to passengers, and addressing societal goals (e.g., emission and accident reduction) and economic needs (e.g., vehicles as smart-living environments). In this respect, the European Union pushes for large-scale collaborative cross-border validation activities on cooperative, connected and automated mobility.
5G-CARMEN addresses these challenges harnessing the concept of “Mobility Corridors”. In 5G-CARMEN important European industries, academics and innovative SMEs commit to achieve world-wide impact by conducting extensive trials across an important corridor (by people/goods traffic volumes), from Bologna to Munich, spanning 600 km of roads, connecting three European regions (Bavaria, Tirol and Trentino/South-Tyrol) across three countries. 5G-CARMEN will realise a 5G-enabled corridor to validate a set of innovative Cooperative, Connected, and Automated Mobility (CCAM) use cases from both business and technical perspectives. To achieve this, 5G-CARMEN will leverage on the most recent 5G technology enablers, including 5G NR, C-V2X interfaces, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), end-to-end network slicing, highly accurate positioning and timing, and predictive quality of service. The neutral host model will be used in order to enable this vision. Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), Over-the-Top (OTT) providers, and service providers will have access to a multi-tenant platform that supports the automotive sector transformation towards delivering safer, greener, and more intelligent transportation with the ultimate goal of enabling self-driving cars.

Objectives

5G-CARMEN pursues the following seven key objectives:

• to specify the technical and business requirements for the planned use cases in order to enable an extended 5G CCAM corridor between Bologna-Munich;
• to design a federated 5G system architecture and deployment model that can effectively support the CCAM use cases;
• to advance the enabling technologies for a 5G corridor including the network-embedded cloud, the NR, and the new frequency planning to conform with the CCAM KPIs;
• to design, implement, and validate a service-oriented, federated, and secure platform for CCAM;
• to validate, evaluate and demonstrate the 5G-CARMEN concepts via single-country and cross border pilots;
• to conduct a market analysis and to devise new business models based on the 5G-CARMEN platform. To provide a detailed techno-economic analysis and road-mapping towards exploitation and commercialisation by industrial partners;
• to ensure the long-term success of the project through standardisation and dissemination in commercial, industrial and scientific fora and by exploiting synergies with other 5G-PPP initiatives.

Use cases/verticals

The 5G-CARMEN project will address the Bologna-Munich corridor. This will result in a transnational European corridor, part of the second wave of the 5G crossborder corridors for connected and automated driving, crossing Italy, Austria, and Germany. The innovations brought by the 5G-CARMEN project will enable a wide variety of heterogeneous automotive applications, meeting their stringent requirements, and will be demonstrated by means of the following use cases tested in real-life conditions:

• vehicle manoeuvre negotiations;
• connected and automated vehicle L3/L4 manoeuvre negotiations;
• in-car adaptive and prioritised QoE for next generation infotainment;
• vehicles’ emissions control in sensitive areas.

WINGS involvement

WINGS has been assigned the leadership of key tasks in 5G-CARMEN, namely T2.4 (System-level technical specifications) and T4.4 (Use cases Integration and Testing). In addition, WINGS will contribute to all the technical work packages of the project. In summary, WINGS will:

• actively participate in the definition of the use cases on vehicles’ emission control in sensitive areas and on in-car adaptive and prioritized QoE for next generation infotainment, the identification of the relevant specifications as well as the pilot planning, validation and benchmarking tasks in this direction;
• assist in the definition of the functional architecture and system specifications from the perspective of data collection, analysis and integration;
• participate in the definition and realization of a resource management framework ideal for a cross-border and multi-domain (i.e., taking various platforms, telcos, OEMs, etc. into consideration) environment, focusing on enabling smooth and seamless MEC cooperation, so as to ensure the delivery of the CCAM concept as well as service continuity;
• identify and contribute to the implementation of the proper components and communication protocols for service orchestration and life-cycle management in a CCAM context and in cross border and multi-domain situations through data collection from heterogeneous sources, as well as data analysis and recommendations generation.

WINGS prospects /exploitation

WINGS plans to exploit the major enabling technologies developed by the 5G-CARMEN project, such as, 5G NR, MEC (inter-MEC cooperation, integration of 5G with ITS-G5), C-V2X@5.9 GHz, predictive QoS and precise positioning. The main exploitation feedback will be related to the performance improvements/benefits obtained from the 5G-CARMEN enabling technologies and to the associated new services that can be provided by these technologies in challenging environments. In specific, there can be valuable synergies with vendors and OEMs, so as to obtain a multiparty infrastructure that will enable the delivery of advanced services (emission control, smart living, manoeuvre negotiations, etc.). Through 5G technologies, WINGS will expand and become more efficient in its offerings dedicated to serving various verticals. It is anticipated that it will be possible for WINGS to deliver content as well as assisted living and environment monitoring services (currently, in the portfolio or new ones) by negotiating slices that will ensure the appropriate performance and quality levels in environments as challenging as the CCAM related ones. In addition, data management and ingestion, predictive analysis and, in general, ML-based sevices and tools are expected to enhance the functionality of WINGS commercial platforms, particularly with respect to domains such as smart cities, assisted living and environmental monitoring.

Awards & demonstration video

Demonstration on Green Driving has received the Best Booth Award, as part of the “EU 5G Cross Border Corridor Projects by 5G-MOBIX, 5G-CARMEN, 5G-CroCo” booth at EuCNC 2019, in Valencia.

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Website: https://www.5gcarmen.eu
Framework: H2020/5GPPP Phase 3
Duration: 11.2018-10.2021

This project has received funding from the Horizon 2020 programme under grant agreement No 825012