DSRC May Have No Place in World of Automated Vehicles, New America Hears
The push to get dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) systems in U.S. cars may be “dead” in an era of automated vehicles, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, at the beginning of a 5.9 GHz forum hosted by his group Friday. Proponents of cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology are pushing to build support for that as an alternative to DSRC (see 1803140055).
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“The conventional wisdom right now is that the new administration has no appetite for a $100 billion mandate for new cars,” Calabrese said. “Particularly if there’s no mandate, the FCC should use the opportunity to take an immediate, fresh look at the highest and best use of this fairly large and now increasingly valuable band of spectrum, which lays empty.” Lots has changed since 1999 when the FCC allocated the 5.9 GHz band for DSRC, he said: “As automakers develop automated vehicles, they are already incorporating and rapidly improving sophisticated crash-avoidance technologies.”
The FCC has been looking at allowing Wi-Fi to use the 5.9 GHz band on a secondary basis since 2013 when then-Chairman Julius Genachowski at CES proposed doing so (see 1301160063). The FCC must “factor in the enormous and growing value of Wi-Fi,” Calabrese said. “Wi-Fi bands are congested in busy places and in a 5G world, consumers will need much wider channels of shared spectrum.”
The few cars that have DSRC systems installed can talk only to each other and avoid accidents only with each other, said Roger Lanctot, Strategy Analytics director-automotive connected mobility. “If a Cadillac CTS has this technology and no other car has it, the only car the CTS can avoid colliding with is another model year 2018 Cadillac CTS,” he said. “This is a problem.” An auto industry official says C-V2X has the same problem. DSRC isn’t dead “yet,” though it’s really struggling, said Lanctot: C-V2X offers “almost identical, if not superior capability” in the same band. A large number of cars leave dealer lots with wireless connections, but customers often don’t pay for the telematics connections, Lanctot said. “We have a lot of zombie cars that have wireless connections that are not activated,” he said. “We really haven’t sold this value proposition.”
There’s a huge automobile recall problem in the U.S. and many of the recalls are for software problems, Lanctot said. If the automakers could correct the software remotely, “billions of dollars could be saved by the auto industry,” he said. “Wireless carriers don’t understand car companies and car companies can’t stand wireless carriers,” he said. “It’s not a kumbaya experience.”
Mary Brown, Cisco senior director-government affairs, said it’s far too early to write an obituary for DSRC and splintering is never good for public policy discussions. The Department of Transportation still lists the DSRC mandate as a “significant rulemaking” and it’s a key part of DOT’s intelligent transportation plan, Brown said. States are deploying infrastructure and vendors are introducing new DSRC equipment, she said. The IEEE just launched a new standards body to update and refresh the standard, she said: “It doesn’t feel dead.”
C-V2X is a “late-to-the-party” challenger that uses the same spectrum as DSRC but isn’t interoperable with DSRC, Brown said. “This is a winner-take-all proposal,” she said. “We’re still in the United States in the very early days. It has not been tested to anywhere near the level of DSRC and certainly hasn’t been tested by technology.” No automakers were represented on the panel and most major auto groups and the FCC didn’t comment.
"To produce safety benefits, cars need to be equipped with V2X, no matter what the technology -- DSRC, 4G LTE-V2X or any future technology," an ITS America spokeswoman said.
Brent Skorup of the Mercatus Center told us afterwards the problem for the FCC seems to be that DOT views 5.9 GHz “as their spectrum.” Universities have spent a “fair amount of money” researching DSRC and want to see it adopted, he said. “There’s a lot of hope” for FCC action, Skorup said. “It’s somewhat of a black eye for the parties involved that this has sat unused for a long time.”