The complexity of wireless communication in vehicles is growing at an alarming rate, and the upcoming 5G will further rely on RF technology to pave the way. Today, vehicles may rely on wireless communication for a dozen or more functions, from safety features and navigation to infotainment and keyless entry. Over the next few years, these capabilities will increasingly extend to autonomous driving, communication with infrastructure and the Internet of Things, especially communication with the Internet world as 4G transitions to 5G.

 

The growing RF complexity poses a significant challenge for automotive manufacturers. As cars become more dependent on wireless communication, the challenge will increase. To help enable the leap to 5G, the industry established the 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) in 2016 to support and guide 4G and 5G standardization, develop testing, promote solutions, and accelerate the commercialization of automotive products.

 

At the same time, challenges for automakers include improving their designs to support faster cellular data rates by migrating from the CAT4 modem standard (150 Mbps download speeds) to CAT16 (1 Gbps) and beyond.

 

 

The complexity and rapid changes in RF are challenging automakers' ability to rapidly develop, test, implement, and deliver products to consumers. The design had to integrate a highly complex wireless system while ensuring quality of service, reliability and robustness. In addition, these standards must be implemented in the production design, as it is often unacceptable or even impossible to redesign a product after it has been released to consumers.

 

To address these challenges, automakers need to validate wireless components and modules in order to integrate them into vehicles. In order to obtain these products, they are increasingly turning to suppliers with extensive experience in the wireless networking and mobile communications industries, which have been supplying smartphone manufacturers and mobile network operators for years. This background also provides valuable expertise and guidance that can help automakers understand and overcome potential obstacles related to standards compliance, regional requirements, and antenna technology. With an increasing number of wireless protocols and vehicle-integrated frequency bands, this expertise becomes particularly important. This helps solve complex 4G and 5G challenges such as Multiple input Multiple Output (MIMO) and carrier aggregation (CA), two widely used technologies that can deliver higher data rates.

 

 

As wireless communication becomes the responsibility of more functions in a car, several design factors are critical to the success of a car design.Rugged and reliable. Wireless components must be able to withstand rigorous daily use in extreme temperatures and humidity, and withstand physical abuse. To ensure that products continue to operate reliably under these conditions, RF components specifically designed for vehicles must meet specific automotive industry standards.

 

IATF16949 is the global standard for quality management systems in the automotive industry. This industry typically wants to comply with IATF requirements for manufacturing, assembling and testing parts in 16949 standard facilities. In addition, during the pre-release certification phase, each part must pass a series of industry-standard tests:

 

1. AEC-Q100 defines standard tests for active components such as switches and ADC10064CIWM power amplifiers (PA).

 

2, the AEC-Q200 is similar to the testing of passive devices, such as Wi-Fi for cellular communications RF filters.

 

3. Longevity. Smartphones are typically only used for three to five years. However, cars typically stay on the road for much longer -10 years or more. Therefore, RF components must be highly reliable and can be used as replacement parts for a long time.

 

4. Coexistence and interference. With so many radios in today's cars, engineers must always be aware of the possibility of RF interference and take a cautious approach to avoid these problems. RF In accordance with government regulations, vendors offer a variety of coexistence filters to address these interference issues.

 

5. Regional wireless standards. Smartphone manufacturers and car manufacturers must comply with regional cellular standards and spectrum distribution. To keep costs down, smartphone vendors and automakers try to create as few different models (stock keeping units or SKUs) as possible. Typically, this means four SKUs covering North America, China, the European Union and other parts of the world.

 

6, DSDA(dual card dual standby) radio. DSDA technology uses two separate transceivers and antenna paths to support two different cellular networks. This allows automakers to offer specific contract services and provide owners with the ability to increase their preferred carrier. DSDA is not widely used yet, but as the market matures, there will be more use cases, making this technology more widespread.

 

 

From a development perspective, it is challenging to anticipate 5G while dealing with the current growth in wireless connectivity. Even with 4G and 5G wireless technologies that are already proven in mobile devices, additional RF must also be extensively tested for complexity and operational requirements to ensure reliability and performance for car use. When designing complex subsystems, such as telematics control units (TCU) and antenna clusters, it is important to keep the following principles in mind.

 

Integration reduces RF complexity. Integration has always been a great way to reduce complexity. With a highly integrated design RF front End (RFFE), the greater the likelihood of reducing overall design complexity. These devices integrate components such as amplifying power (PA), switches, low noise amplifiers (LNA) and filters into a single pre-certified module. This is achieved by reducing PCB complexity and external tuning requirements to speed up design and overall time to market. These integrated RFFE further reduce complexity by supporting cas, advanced filters, and diversity RF chains. Widely deployed by operators worldwide, CA aggregates spectrum from multiple frequency bands to deliver higher data rates and improve network performance. The CA environment is extremely complex, with more than 300 different combinations of frequency bands being used by different network operators. Today's mobile device RFFE helps solve these problems by addressing many of these combinations of CA in vehicle communication systems, and they can help solve the same challenges.

 

Rf modules and components with proven performance. Many wireless device manufacturers have a large portfolio of proven wireless mobile device technologies. These mobile devices provide global wireless network access to global wireless networks. Using these proven components helps ensure the high reliability and performance of automotive wireless systems.

 

Coexistence and interference filters. Coexistence filters help reduce interference problems, which can lead to receiver sensitivity issues and non-compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. When using highly integrated RF modularity, multiple radio transceivers are placed close to each other. The transmitted power of the RF chain can exceed the power level of the signal reaching the nearby receiver, which can cause problems with the sensitivity of the receiver. Therefore, many integrated RFFE they include embedded filters to reduce the possibility of interference, especially between adjacent frequency bands. For example, mobile devices and cars use a coexistence filter Wi-Fi system that allows Wi-Fi to operate simultaneously with cellular band 41.

 

 

By 2025, every new car on the road will be wirelessly connected in some way. Automakers will rely on wireless communications for an extremely wide range of functions, including vehicle safety and control. These capabilities will need to support a number of cellular technologies, including 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G, as well as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and near Field communication (NFC). As the automotive RF environment becomes more complex and challenging, the use of reliable communication technologies in the equally complex world of mobile devices will become increasingly important.