The 5G-CARMEN project was able to successfully reach all planned milestones and achieve important results. First of all, the final version of the 5G-CARMEN system architecture and its interfaces were provided, including technical specifications for its sub-components, their interfaces, and the protocols to be used for the data exchange.
The Munich-Bologna Corridor has been equipped with 5G in 4 locations (Munich, Trento, Italy-Austria border at Brennerpass and Germany-Austria border at Kufstein) and two important technical achievements were developed to minimise latency and service interruption caused by standard network reselection procedures across borders:
· accelerated network reselection was temporarily introduced in the three networks for 5G-CARMEN subscriptions/devices, yielding an interruption of the connectivity in the range of 2-4 seconds compared to tens of seconds or even minutes in standard roaming implementations
· local break-out in the visited network (i.e. the network of MTA in Austria, for 5G-CARMEN “visitors” with subscriptions from either TIM in Italy or DTAG in Germany) was implemented to allow low-latency communication to the respective MEC infrastructures hosting the 5G-CARMEN services, instead of the so-called “tromboning” of the communication flow common in standard roaming, where all traffic is routed via the home network.
The project also refocused its effort and developed two new use-cases, namely Connected and Automated lane-change manoeuvres (with centralized approach and decentralized approach) and in-lane manoeuvres.
· The centralized lane-change manoeuvres were successfully demonstrated on 3 BMW vehicles, and were based on a novel setup running on the MEC systems: a dedicated Manoeuvring service gets information from a Server Local Dynamic Map (S-LDM) and provides response to the vehicles through a response router.
· The decentralized lane change and in the in-lane manoeuvres were demonstrated by CRF prototype vehicle. In these use cases, information is exchanged among vehicles utilizing the low-latency Geoservice southbound interface at 20Hz, which acts as message relay
Despite use case testing on public roads had to cope with very dynamic road and traffic conditions, as well as with the dynamic load conditions of production cellular network, the 5G-CARMEN consortium achieved an extensive experimental campaign carried out in all sites, focussing on cross-border aspects, so that the system was demonstrated in both borders.
Furthermore, the project also developed a new market analysis and strategy for Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) services. This considers and blends efficiently the outcomes of 5G NSA measurements, NR simulations and Digital Twin with a business analysis towards a proposal for go-to-market strategy and the impact created by societal benefits. It also considers the results and outcomes of Strategic Deployment Agenda (SDA) study and has taken up lessons learnt from the various SDA studies in their semi-public discussion and feedback loops.
The test results collected towards the end of the project have been presented in standard entities and industrial associations (mainly ETSI, 5GAA, IETF and GSMA), especially for topics that directly impacted standardization and industrial associations activities.
