AutoAir 5G Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Test Bed Goes Live

The Airspan led 5G for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs)
consortium, AutoAir, has made huge strides at the Millbrook Proving
Grounds test track this week.

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The consortium announced final deployment of a Hyper-Dense small cell
network of 89 base stations operating in the in the 2.3 and 3.4-3.8 GHz
mid-band spectrum, including a 22 sector high-speed mobility 57-71 GHz
mmWave highway system, delivering 5 Gbit/s every 300m. The live public
demonstrations showed the system delivering greater than 1 Gbit/s
capacity to a McLaren sports car while travelling at 160 mph on the
Millbrook high-speed bowl with handovers occurring every 2 seconds.
Real-time Telemetry was provided by McLaren’s Altas system.

A second demonstration showed real-time video streaming between multiple
vehicles (each with four 4K cameras). The video was streamed between a
range of different passenger cars, coaches and emergency vehicles which
included police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.

These important achievements are fundamental steps towards enabling the
key 5G use cases for CAVs. The AutoAir test bed at Millbrook can also
directly contribute to 5G in other adjacent sectors such as Rail
Transportation.

Eric Stonestrom, CEO of Airspan Networks said:

“Densification is key to making continuous 5G connectivity a reality,
and we’re very proud of what we have accomplished with our partners.”

Paul Senior, CSO of Airspan Networks and CEO of Dense Air said:

“AutoAir at Millbrook is one of the most ambitious 5G Testbeds and
Trials sites in the world. AutoAir is directly tackling the key 5G
technology and system design challenges that CAVs create. The project
has now completed the deployment of a hyper-dense small cell network
that delivers ultra-high capacities which enables a range of new CAV use
cases to be explored. Everyone in AutoAir consortium is excited to have
reached this important milestone.”

Brendan O’Reilly, CTO at Telefónica UK, said:

“The AutoAir project is a great demonstration of how partnerships can
help shape the use cases and drive the benefits that we all want to see
from 5G. Test networks at sites like Millbrook will be crucial in
understanding how 5G will enable the development of connected and
autonomous vehicles as well as the associated business and consumer use
cases which will transform the automotive sector.”

About AutoAir

The AutoAir project is a consortium of partners led by Airspan Networks
and is hosted at Millbrook. It is a unique, accelerated development
programme for 5G technology and is based on small cells that operate on
a “Neutral Host” basis. The shared neutral host platform allows multiple
public and private mobile operators to simultaneously use the same
infrastructure through network slicing, which can radically improve the
economics for 5G networks.

Other partners in the AutoAir consortium are Blu Wireless Technology,
McLaren Applied Technologies, the 5G Innovation Centre at the University
of Surrey, Dense Air, Real Wireless, Quortus and Celestia Technologies
Group.

About Airspan

Airspan is a multi-award winning 4G & 5G network densification solution
provider with an expansive product portfolio of indoor and outdoor,
compact Femto, Pico, Micro and Macro base stations. The perfect tool kit
to exploit the full potential of technologies such as mmWave, Sub 6GHz,
Massive MIMO and open V-RAN architectures. As well as an industry
leading fixed wireless access and backhaul solution portfolio for PTP
and PTMP applications.

About Dense Air

Dense Air is headquartered in London, UK and has offices in the target
launch markets of Ireland, Belgium and Portugal. Dense Air provides a
unique “carrier of carriers” neutral host small cell services to deliver
cost-effective densification to existing LTE mobile carriers or service
providers. Dense Air is conducting extensive trials and
proof-of-concepts in 2018 and will offer commercial services in 2019,
including in the recently acquired spectrum in New Zealand, and plans to
offer 5G services in Australia in 2020.

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