Research team highlights key challenges and areas for future research in the field of Vehicle-to-Everything communications.

The study, which conducted 19 interviews with experts in the field of V2X communications, identified key discussion areas and challenges.

Date Posted
01/27/2020
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Identifier
2020-L00934

Challenges of Vehicle-to-Everything Communication. Interviews among Industry Experts

Summary Information

Vehicle-to-everything communication, also referred to as V2X, is the linkage of Connected Vehicles with the Internet at large, representing a more general category than Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) or Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I), which are primarily concerned with a vehicle's immediate environment and nearby road users. While V2X communication is expected to become commonplace in new vehicles within the next five years, it still faces significant barriers to adoption. Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany interviewed 19 experts in V2X communications from across the industry to construct a holistic understanding of challenges faced by the technology. The results were synthesized into a range of focus areas that may be explored and analyzed in by future researchers or anyone seeking to implement V2X communications.

Lessons Learned

  • Security software to defend systems from attacks should be developed, with the goal of making attacks more complicated to launch. The experts noted that completely eliminating vulnerabilities is unlikely to be a realistic goal.
  • Privacy considerations should be addressed. The paper noted that European organizations would also need to obey the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which contains both strict rules and technical gray areas that would need to be interpreted.
  • Implementers must deal with the existing transportation investment backlog. Because most agencies are cost- and risk-averse, even technologies with established economic benefits are slow to be adopted. More experimental or novel technologies, such as V2X, will need to be shown to have consistent benefits before they will be widely embraced.
  • Clarification of legal regulation and responsibility is made necessary by the complexities of V2X implementations. The experts noted that, while government regulations may create inefficiencies in some cases, the stability they bring is still beneficial to the market as a whole.

Additionally, several other topics were noted as needing further research or clarification:

  • Determining the technological base. It was unclear whether WLAN or cellular technology would provide greater utility for V2X systems' current and future needs.
  • Future relevance of V2X. Experts on the more innovative edge of transportation technology noted that autonomous vehicles may make V2X unnecessary, as the vehicles would contain the entire information infrastructure necessary for intelligent navigation within themselves. However, others noted that V2X could be vital for the transitional period, as fully automated vehicles are not expected to become mainstream within the near-term.
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