Novel C-ITS Use-cases for Road Tunnels using Emerging 5G Communication Technologies

Novel cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) have emerged in recent years, in part thanks to rapid and ubiquitous deployment of information and communication (ICT) technologies including on the public road networks. This has been accompanied by significant progress in the field of vehicular automation (e.g., autonomous and self-driving cars), vehicular communication (e.g., V2X), sensor fusion and big data technologies. With regards to vehicular communication, upcoming 5th generation cellular networks (5G) is deemed a promising technology for providing connectivity and interactivity between different agents on the road network – e.g., road users, central traffic center, infrastructure and emergency responders. 5G's ultra-reliable and low latency (URLLC) service category is expected to be a key enabler for transport and mobility use-cases – e.g., as a scalable V2X communication approach for C-ITS. On the other hand, employing multiaccess edge computing (5G MEC) techniques can reduce the communication and processing latency to the level required for latency-sensitive and interactive C-ITS use-cases. While C-ITS and 5G V2X have been mostly discussed in the context of general road networks, limited attention has been given to road tunnels in particular for safety and rescue services in case of incidents in such challenging environments. This talk will therefore present how newly emerging 5G-based V2X communication services and paradigms can be exploited to provide safer road tunnels using state-of-the-art C-ITS services and applications using a generic 5G-based system architecture.