Testing Advanced V2X Applications and Functions for Connected Automated Driving

• Wide range of applications, from V2X Day One to functions for connected automated driving (CAV)
• All relevant standards and technologies
• Scalable thanks to V2X (vehicle-to-everything) multistack with high number of communication nodes
• Infrastructure support in the ASM tool suite 
• Seamless integration with ADAS/AD test solutions

Task

The first cars equipped with V2X technology are on the roads, but the race has just begun. The next generation of applications to enable cooperative perception and driving will be introduced in the coming years, making conventional and automated driving more efficient, comfortable, and safer. However, testing the next generation of V2X and connected vehicles will subsequently become a more challenging task that requires advanced HIL simulation.

Challenge

The next evolution stage of V2X, called collective perception, will allow vehicles to “see through the eyes” of the others, e.g., cars or infrastructure, to gather information on road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists, and obstacles that cannot be detected by the vehicles’ own sensors. Testing collective perception will have to provide flexible, scalable and realistic sensor simulation as well as a more detailed simulated environment with infrastructure support. Cooperative driving will even take it a step further to enable sharing the intended vehicle trajectories and coordinate maneuvers with other traffic users in real time. Validating functions for cooperative driving will require handling a large number of scenarios with a high number of vehicles. This makes a tailored concept for scenario and test development, such as scenario-based testing, indispensable.

Solution

A key factor for successfully testing and validating advanced V2X applications and functions for connected automated driving is a suitable combination of a cutting-edge HIL system and a flexible simulator for V2X communication.

The novel dSPACE V2X Solution for HIL offers seamless integration of the waveBEE®hive V2X simulator by Nordsys with an ADAS/AD-capable SCALEXIO HIL system to allow for testing a wide range of applications, from V2X Day One to connected automated vehicle (CAV), that require advanced vehicle, environment, and infrastructure simulation.

The V2X simulation system supports relevant standards in Europe, the USA, and China as well as the currently available technologies for device-to-device communication: 802.11p and LTE-V2X. The system is equipped with what is known as a V2X multistack, enabling it to use a high number of simulated communication stations, such as vehicles or roadside units, with full V2X stacks that run in parallel. This makes the solution scalable and fit for highly complex scenarios, such as cooperative driving. To develop applications for collective perception early on, the solution also includes a draft implementation of collective perception message. The V2X simulator allows for secured and unsecured communication, and is complemented by a dynamic channel attenuation, which enables testing under more realistic channel conditions, such as high channel load. This lets you analyze congestion control of the V2X ECU when hundreds of messages are broadcast within a short period of time.

For integration with waveBEE®hive, dSPACE provides a dedicated SCALEXIO interface blockset based on standardized V2X application protocols for easy integration into new or existing HIL test environments. Together with the ASM tool suite, customers will receive a tailored solution with a high number of fellow vehicles that are important for use cases with cooperative driving, or sensor simulation with different sensor types, different levels of detail, and open interfaces. Scenario generation and scenario-based testing provided by dSPACE can also help reduce the workload. Infrastructure support in ASM/ModelDesk rounds off the solution and enables a smooth handover of data related to intersection topology and traffic light status from the model to V2X communication, for better handling complex message types, such as MAP or SPaT without expert knowledge.