BARCELONA, Spain – NXP showcased its vision for the connected car of the future this week at Mobile World Congress. The topics highlighted not only addressed typical car connectivity functions, but also autonomous driving and integration via vehicle-to-x.
Starting with the outside of the concept car, a few of the concepts included the integration of NFC in order to enter the vehicle via a smartphone or to deliver products to the trunk. In addition, two possible smart license plate examples included the use of electronically managed toll or parking facilities through long-range RFID functionality. Law enforcement agencies also could access information about the vehicle and the owner via the smart license plate technology.
The car is equipped with intelligent lights and utilizes chip technology taken from NXP’s communications heritage with e-cards to ensure a high level of security and protect from malicious hacking activities. Once inside the car, there is wireless charging enabled for passenger devices and the ability to utilize autonomous driving while conducting other activities. Such as watching a movie in the backseat.
As more antennas and radios are required in a connected car there is the potential for costs to increase due to cabling requirements. As a result, NXP is working to integrate multiple functions – GPS, cellular and NFC for example – in a single solution and to shorten cable length requirements. V2X needs to have very short cables in order to ensure a minimum in signal loss and low latency.
NXP is also looking to future concepts such as expanding V2X-type functionality to motorbikes, working with existing unused Sirius satellite antennas in U.S. vehicles, and the use of V2X functionality as a second tier of support for radar to allow connected cars to continue to stay alert to their surroundings in bad weather. A note explaining the Sirius comment is that in 2013, 60% of all new cars in the U.S. were equipped with this functionality even if the owner has not turned on the service.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
