Communication advances Chapter | 2 15helps in locating parking space and for planning a multi-modal trip while on car,
thus making driving more enjoyable.
Vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) communication refers to the exchange of infor-
mation between a vehicle and a pedestrian nearby, so as to mitigate a forthcom-
ing danger. The idea is that V2P can early alert about vulnerable road users
(pedestrians, bikers), which are not equipped with high-performance traffic
processing sensors and actuators but may carry light beacons or smart watches
that notify surrounding vehicles about their presence. The alerts can be valuable
for the vehicle, especially in blind spots, such as road crossings or sharp turns.
Vehicle-to-device (V2D) communication describes the interaction between
a vehicle and portable electronic devices that the passengers may carry. For
example, V2C refers to the driver’s smartphone that is connected to the car
via Bluetooth and allows hands-free communication but also can extend the
in-vehicle services through third-party applications that interact with the car.
Another example is the monitoring devices that car manufacturers install in the
cars, which collect engine data and allow the car manufacturer official smart-
phone applications to show reports concerning the health engine or provide pre-
ventive maintenance alerts.
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) mainly refers to all types of electric vehicles from bat-
tery-only powered (BEV), to plug-in hybrids (PHEV), and hydrogen fuel cell
electric ones (FCEV), which frequently connect to the power grid to recharge.
During this process, the vehicles can also interact with the services provided by
the power grid and can either sell electricity back to the grid (when they have
enough capacity) or accelerate their charging rate.
All the aforementioned communication types are commonly used today
for describing any type of interaction between the vehicle’s control units, sen-
sor, actuators, and the environment are termed by the broader term Vehicle-to-
everything (V2X) communication. Whereas several modes of communication
can be explored, if connecting a vehicle to any possible entity, the next section
investigates the most commonly used standards communications technology for
realizing V2X communications (Cleveland & Morris, 2015).
2.3 Cellular V2X (C-V2X) and the case of 5G
The standardization of the Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology
has been finalized by 3GPP in 2017 (GSMA, 2017) and aimed at connecting
vehicles with the road network infrastructure, with all other types of road-users
and with the cloud. It soon attracted the interest of car manufacturers who
acquire mobile and short-range communication technology expertise and devel-
ops C-V2X connectivity to their vehicles. The advantages of C-V2X over previ-
ous communication technologies for the automotive industry are among others:
• They use the wide coverage of existing LTE networks and take advantage of
the already tested security features.
• They allow high-speed and reliable communication even in dense traffic.