UK project to develop 5G satellite technology for vehicles

Connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) will rely on fast and high capacity data networks to operate properly, streaming information both to and from infrastructure, online cloud services and other vehicles. In towns and cities, this may not be a problem, but even in the UK rural areas are prone to regions of poor mobile data coverage, as anybody who has attempted to drive around the countryside listening to digital radio or using satnav will know only too well. The new partnership between the government space agency and mobile communications giant O2 aims to tackle this potential problem by building and testing seamless high-speed data connections.

According to O2’s research, CAVs are expected to generate 4TB per hour of data, which will be challenging to handle. With the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) claiming development autonomous vehicles a keystone of UK strategy and investing £120m in CAVs since 2014, business secretary Greg Clark said that the partnership between UKSA and O2 “will build on our world leading reputation in the development and manufacture of satellites even further, to bring together two of the UK’s great strengths – automotive and space, putting us at the forefront of the next generation of self-driving cars of tomorrow.”