TE - White Papers

DRIVING TOWARD AN EMISSIONLESS FUTURE IN TRANSPORTATION S e n s i n g We l l n e s s Biometric sensor technology will be another, increasingly important area for innovation. Soon, face, ocular, voice, or ECG technology will enable cars to recognize their driver. Rather than using a key or pressing a keyless start button, the driver will simply grab the steering wheel and embedded biometric sensors will start the car. Piezo sensors embedded in the car seat will monitor heart rate while dashboard cameras will track head movements to see if a driver is getting drowsy. Expertise in both medical device technology and consumer wellness applications— including health and fitness monitors—gives TE an advantage in developing and ruggedizing the miniature sensors that will make driver (and passenger) health monitoring an essential part of the connected driving experience. ANTENNAS: THE HEART OF CONNECTIVITY In all of the discussions about car connectivity, the antenna might be the component that's taken for granted the most. But it's a key component, along with sensors and in-vehicle data networks, of the connected car. Typically, in the 1980s, cars had only one antenna: the AM/ FM whip antenna. With the introduction of GPS and cellular service, the number of antennas in cars increased. By the late 1980s, some cars in the US also had another antenna for 800MHz cellular band. With the advent of CDMA, PCS, and GSM in the 1990s, car designers were challenged with finding a way to mount all of the antennas needed to support the multiple bands required for cellular services. Today, there are in excess of 20 antennas in a typical car. There are antennas for 3G, 4G, and 4G LTE cellular service. There are Bluetooth antennas, satellite antennas for GPS, antennas in your tire for monitoring tire pressure, and antennas for on-board infotainment applications. Finding space to fit these antennas into a vehicle is an on-going design challenge. D S R C A n t e n n a s Soon, cars will feature even more antennas. They may have six antennas just for cellular service. To create robust V2V and V2I communications, cars could require up to six DSRC antennas to provide adequate redundancy and increase coverage. As cars come to rely more on the cloud, redundant long-range antennas will gain even more importance to help ensure constant connectivity and fail- safe reliability. T h e E m e r g e n c e o f 5 G The exponential increase in data from sensors and the need for almost-instant insight has made latency a central issue. One of the limitations of current 4G technologies is that radio waves go from the car to the cell tower down to a base station on the ground below it, slowing the speed of transmission. 5G resolves this, providing data rates 30 to 50 times higher than 4G—with a much lower latency. Instead of having a separate radio transmitter and antenna mounted on a tower, 5G networks integrate both in a single unit called an Active Antenna System (AAS). Each AAS will include up to 128 separate antennas with high-speed coaxial connectors between them and the radio. When combined with massive multiple-input, multiple- output (MIMO) protocols, these units will enable vehicles to share and receive more than one radio signal simultaneously over the same radio channel. This will mean that the AAS will be asked to handle a content explosion. When available, 5G networks will operate at speeds 100 times faster than 4G. 5G will handle 100 to 1000 times more machine-to-machine connections than 4G. Latency of less than 1 millisecond is significantly better than 4G. This will make real-time data streaming possible—both to and from the cloud—with streaming infotainment systems, in-vehicle VR systems, and many other applications including vehicle software updates. Because of an incipient backup system of low earth orbit satellites with very low latency, 5G will encourage innovations around satellite antennas. THE CAR IN THE AGE OF CONNECTIVITY

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