Unleashing The Next Generation of Automotive Connectivity

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona at the end of February Qualcomm made a significant announcement about their next-generation connected car technologies. As part of their expanding Snapdragon Digital Chassis portfolio, they launched the Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem-RF Gen 2. This chipset is 3GPP Release 16-compliant and is being sampled by global automakers worldwide for expected commercial availability in late 2023.

The Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem-RF Gen 2 chipset supports the following advanced connectivity technologies, which will enable automakers to deliver premium digital experiences:

•Higher processing power, coverage and throughput with an integrated quad core CPU and up to 200 MHz of aggregated network bandwidth to provide new opportunities for services and support for the most advanced connectivity technologies and speeds needed for faster content streaming, online gaming, autonomous driving and more.

•Increased support for vehicle safety for mission critical and emergency services that require connectivity to the network such as next-generation eCall and support for satellite communications to ensure ubiquitous connectivity and communications in remote and rural areas.

•Reduced cost with fewer components needed as this latest version of the Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem-RF features a multi-core CPU to allow for apps to run directly on the modem and features hypervisor support to isolate workloads, resulting in seamless connectivity and power efficiency.

•Next-generation advanced location engine that improves location accuracy and robustness in all environments to support emergency services, navigation, safety alerts and autonomous driving features; accurate positioning in the most challenging environments to enable use cases such as HD maps, automated valet parking and more.

•Integrated C-V2X technology to support direct communications to enhance short range safety and mobility service.

•Data routing within the vehicle at up to 1GB per second, giving automakers the flexibility to move traffic from the telematics control unit (TCU) to the infotainment system, a Wi-Fi hotspot or other connected device; ensures seamless communication for passengers to enjoy their connected services without any interruptions.

What makes this chipset so important to the industry is that it unleashes the power of 5G capability and puts the automotive industry in a very interesting position to be a leader in driving the development and adoption of new and innovative applications and services. 

Snapdragon Connectivity

During the early days of 5G many mobile network operators (MNO) were extolling its virtues for enabling autonomous vehicles and intelligent transport systems. As we progress through 2023 there are only about 6.5 million 5G-enabled vehicles and the majority of these are in China and Asia.

Many of the real benefits that 5G can bring are dependent on the MNOs following through on their investments in 5G and not only deploying the 5G radio technology but also upgrading to a 5G network core. These stand-alone 5G implementations (5G Radio+ 5G Network core) enable a cloud native architecture that can deliver a true cloud-to-car continuum. This will in turn support microservices and open integration, bringing scalability and interoperability to the industry. This connectivity continuum, combined with the rapidly expanding number of software-defined vehicles, presents a huge 5G opportunity.

Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System

Another significant advantage that Qualcomm brings to the automotive industry is scale. At Qualcomm’s automotive analyst day last year, the point was made that when they introduce a chip for the mobile phone industry, they scale to hundreds of millions of chipsets within months versus 1 to 2 years in the case of automotive. What’s interesting about the Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem-RF Gen 2 chipset is it includes the X75, Qualcomm’s latest 5G advanced ready chipset that will be in smartphones in the second half of 2023.  The Auto 5G Modem-RF Gen 2 won’t be in vehicles until 2025 so Qualcomm is giving automakers two advantages; first, a commercially proven and tested high volume chipset when cars roll off the line; and second, a chipset that is ready to deliver advanced 5G capabilities to unleash new opportunities.

At the MWC event in Barcelona, I had the opportunity to catch up with Nakul Duggal, senior vice president and GM, automotive, with Qualcomm Technologies, and ask him some background questions on this product introduction. What follows is an edited transcript of a much longer interview.

Wards Intelligence: The transition from 4G to 5G in automotive is obviously slower than we would have anticipated. What’s new about this 5G chipset from an automaker’s perspective? What's the advantage here from what they have, and is this what they been waiting for that?

Duggal: We started to talk about 5G designs with automakers around 2017. The first set of deployments were probably in late 2019, early 2020. China kicked off early and others followed. But the silicon that was being designed back then was really our first-generation automotive 5G modems. So, the standards that they were based on were still early releases of 3GPP.

As you might imagine we've had some decent adoption, but the adoption was 5G-centric, based upon the region that you were in, and it was usually a combination of 4G and 5G.

This time nearly everybody's deploying 5G because they want to make sure that the network longevity issues are circumvented.

Now, there are some automakers who are selling vehicles in markets where they know that 4G is going to be around for the foreseeable future. So, for Africa and developing markets they may still pick a 4G-based platform. (In) some markets where 5G will be there, but 4G won’t go away, the size of the market is just massive. And then the footprint that these automakers have is, from a pricing perspective, for vehicles that are entry-tier. So, for those tiers, they're concerned about the cost of the platform, and they're not concerned about network longevity issues. That's where there is an opportunity for 4G, but mostly everything else is moving towards 5G.

The other thing that we have introduced on this platform is a more modern modem based on the Snapdragon X75 platform announced at MWC. We've added a lot more processing power into the chip, so it has a quad core processor because we are seeing a lot of new applications that automakers want to run on this platform. It has more integrated processing and better GPS. It is future-proofed for satellite connectivity. We can connect into multiple constellations with a new software update and some new hardware. So, I look at it as the platform that will start to kick off designs in the late 2024 and early 2025 timeframe, when we'll start to see the vehicle on the road.

Wards Intelligence: When you talk about satellite, can you explain what that means?

Duggal: There are two types of satellite populations. One is non-terrestrial network (NTN) based, which is basically a form of 3GPP standard that supports satellite connectivity. 3GPP extended its standards to support satellite and it uses a 3GPP waveform and standard protocols, and as a result it is straightforward to deploy on modems that are designed to support 3GPP.

Then there are other satellites that are proprietary. For example, on the handset side, we have made an announcement in partnership with Iridium, which is a proprietary wave form and proprietary implementation. So, in our base modem the X75 we will support the capability for Iridium and the capability for NTN. So as that base capability is there, then you need some RF hardware support to implement it and get it commercialized. That gives us the flexibility, the optionality, to really be able to have any kind of conversation with any kind of satellite. The idea is to future-proof the platform as there will be a variety of different satellite providers.

Wards Intelligence: From a car manufacturer’s perspective, reaching the uncovered world obviously has lots of advantages. Are you getting lots of conversations about this?

Duggal: There are certain markets and territories that need satellite connectivity for the types of vehicles selling in the location. Where these vehicles are being driven, they require mostly safety, messaging and emergency tracking-type scenarios. These early satellite solutions still don't have enough capability to be able to have high-speed data. Currently it's mostly messaging and low-speed data. However, as you start to build these services out, as you start to build the platforms and launch new constellations, then the capability will increase.

Wards Intelligence: You were talking about the fact that there's more processing power on the chip and new apps. What types of apps are you seeing?

On The Road and Stationary Connectivity Applications

Duggal: There are so many different features that customers are now starting to get access to. Always-on connectivity in the car is an important feature. Remote services, for example sentry mode or surveillance of the car when you have parked it. This requires some kind of watchdog or alarm mode to be running in the background on the telematic system. This system remains turned on when you park your vehicle, but it must run in low power mode and needs to turn on very quickly if an alarm is triggered. If you think about a vehicle from an architecture perspective, the smaller number of systems that need to wake up when you need to process something, the higher your overall battery savings are. The idea could be to wake up the modem and then go wake up some other processes for it to launch an application to send an alert. Or, if you have enough processing in the modem, then you don't need to wake anything up. You can just run that application locally on the Snapdragon Auto 5G Modem-RF Gen 2.

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