NEC demonstrated adaptive network control technology in its multi-access edge computing (MEC) servers and base stations in a use case concerning automated driving. These trials successfully allocated radio resources (frequency bandwidth and time slots) to vehicles with high urgency as part of providing services that require real-time communication control for mobile networks.
NEC said the tests confirmed that base stations can support safe driving by steadily suppressing communications delay time to within 100 milliseconds by preferentially assigning radio resources to vehicles with high urgency based on the analysis results of vehicle location information, camera images of the area around the road and other data.
In the experiment, an automated driving environment was simulated in an anechoic chamber. The MEC server detected pedestrians by analyzing images of street cameras at an intersection, collected information on the location of surrounding vehicles, and shared such information with individual vehicles in real time. The commercial LTE base station was placed near the intersection, and multiple devices, such as vehicle models, cameras and smartphones, were connected to create a situation where there was a shortage of wireless resources.
