Trial of 1Gbps 5G Mobile Network for UK Autonomous Vehicles to Start

The AutoAir project, which is supported by a £4.1m Government grant, has confirmed that the UK’s first independent 5G enabled trial of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) will go live this month at the Millbrook Proving Ground (Bedfordshire). Mobile broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps are expected.At present it’s well known that fast travel speeds can cause complications for mobile connectivity (i.e. the cell-tower hand-off as you move between networks and different infrastructure). On top of that the rise in autonomous vehicles is widely expected to require significantly more network bandwidth.As such the AutoAir project was established to test whether or not future 5G based mobile technology can be used to solve these challenges. According to last year’s announcement (here), the trial will harness 5G small cells in both licensed sub 6GHz and mmWave bands on a shared “neutral host” platform, which allows “multiple public and private 5G operators to simultaneously use the same infrastructure using network slicing.”Apparently the new test network is now close to completion at the Millbrook Proving Ground (due to go live this month). All the masts for the antennas needed to transmit 5G radio data are in place and being connected, while 19km of fibre optic cabling has been laid to provide capacity and the remaining wireless equipment is being deployed now.Overall some 23 small cell base station sites will soon go live around the site in order to create a low latency, wide-area 4G / 5G wireless infrastructure that can deliver top data speeds of “up to 1Gbps.” The work is being led by Airspan Communications and is supported by mobile operator O2, vehicle testing firm Millbrook and of course the Government.