Verizon Business has deployed a “highly-customised” private 5G “environment” at a vehicle test track in Neustadt, Germany, belonging to automaker Audi. The setup uses multiple cores, radio frequencies, and network technologies, variously from network vendor Nokia, edge/cloud vendor Amazon Web Services (AWS), and system integrator Smart Mobile Labs. The brief was to duplicate at a single site the connectivity environments around the world.
The new private 5G “environment” at Neustadt features “custom-built replicas” of Verizon’s public network in the US and various unnamed local European networks, as well as the roaming network of Audi’s unnamed MVNO partner in the Asia Pacific region. As such, the project appears like a complex undertaking, and a genuine standout on the current private 5G circuit. The multi-core test setup gives Audi a competitive advantage in the global market, it said.
Its geographic flexibility means Audi can “streamline” its multi-territory R&D test cycle, it said, by replicating regional connected-driving conditions – as the industry moves to “software-defined vehicles”. The track and network, located 300 kilometres west of Audi’s headquarters in Ingolstadt, are available to other brands from the Volkswagen Group. These include Škoda, SEAT, CUPRA, Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche, and Ducati, as well as Volkswagen itself. The network uses the 3.7-3.8GHz private-5G band in Germany.
In terms of its component pieces, Nokia is supplying a dual-mode LTE (4G) and 5G radio access (RAN) and core network, using its macro-sized Modular Private Wireless (MPW) platform, which is geared for outdoor private cellular networks. AWS is supplying a private multi-access edge-compute (MEC) capability via its on-prem Outposts compute product. AWS is also supplying cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology, apparently.
Smart Mobile Labs, one of the prime integrators on the German private 5G scene, is providing “real-time video and data-transmission technology”. Specifically, this covers “stream management and distribution, full high-definition streaming, push-to-talk/video, stream recording, et al”, said Verizon Business. The whole setup is to support testing of automotive voice, video, and data apps for vehicle safety and autonomous mobility (“and more”), it said.
It stated: “Testable applications include voice, video, safety, autonomous mobility, vehicle-to-cloud communication, OEM-customer interactions, C-V2X features and functionalities, and more.” Verizon Business is the ‘prime’ on the project, coordinating the design and build, and also managing the network ‘run’ (“support of the high-performance, stable and secure private LTE/5G network”), it suggested.
Petr Kozak, head of development for infotainment, connectivity, data management and AI at Audi, commented: “Our needs for this test track were complex and multi-dimensional, encompassing many technologies, geographic network conditions, and industry trends. Verizon Business was able to provide a complete solution that will take time and cost out of the testing cycle and give us a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.”
TJ Fox, senior vice president of industrial IoT and automotive at Verizon Business, said: “This is about more than equipping a work site with a private network. This is about bringing network conditions from around the world to one test facility, allowing Audi to exceed the lofty demands of the [future] mobility market… Vehicles are not just about transportation, but a means of communication, entertainment, education, and work…. The vehicle of the future will be packed with technology that needs to work under many different sets of network conditions. Audi and Verizon Business are solving for those needs with this state-of-the-art facility.”
