5G at the service of Smart Mobility
TIM with the 5G-Carmen consortium for intelligent and sustainable transport.

For many people their car is a second home. For that reason, research and sector industries have been working for several years now to make the driving experience more pleasant. However, mobility really becomes smart when technology helps us do even more, and respecting the environment in doing so. Like the case of 5G-Carmen, the European consortium that TIM belongs to.

Experimentation on the Brenner Motorway Corridor

5G for Connected and Automated Road Mobility in the European Union, or simply 5G-Carmen, is an initiative sustained by the European Union as part of the Horizon 2020 Framework Program to promote research and experimentation projects for a new sustainable, automated, co-operative, and connected mobility model, thanks to 5G. There are 25 partners, including FCA and BMW in the automotive sector, TIM, Deutsche Telekom and Magenta in connectivity, Nokia and Qualcomm for network equipment and terminals, the motorway concessionaire A22 and several university and research bodies who have decided to add their commitment to a project that began in 2018 and will be concluded at the end of this year. This is the framework within which new tests have been carried out on the Brenner in recent weeks. This is one of the trans-European road arteries connecting Bologna with Munich, and with more than 80,000 daily transits. More specifically, experiments concerned the motorway stretches at the Italy-Austria and Austria-Germany borders, also proving the effectiveness of intelligent transport in cross-border mode, in two distinct scenarios.

In a first Situation Awareness test, the sensor infrastructure installed on the A22 motorway, connected to sensors on board vehicles developed by the Fiat Research Centre, highlighted the danger from heavy rains and transmitted the information through the 5G network on the TIM Edge Cloud platform to a second vehicle entering the risk area.  The second vehicle, informed of the risk, reduced its speed in order to cross the area in question more safely.

In the Green Driving scenario, the A22 platform detected critical environmental pollution in the stretch between San Michele all’Adige and Egna and so sent the vehicles developed by the Fiat Research Centre suggestions on the speed they should travel at when crossing it. The indications, transmitted by the 5G network on the TIM Edge Cloud platform, enabled vehicles to reduce their environmental impact.

Smart mobility: towards a radical change inspired by sustainable development

These tests show us the true future of smart mobility. Though many vehicles offer services like navigation maps updated in real time or listening to music in streaming, the future is a more radical change.

The European Community estimates that mobility on wheels will be reinvented by 2030: growing urbanisation, digitalisation and automation are just some of this trend’s key indicators. Vehicles will become intelligent entities. Thanks to mobile connectivity, people in them will communicate with each other and, above all, there will be communication between vehicles and between vehicles and infrastructures.

Smart mobility will therefore represent a key pillar of sustainable development, contributing to safer streets, cities sized on a human scale, and much lower CO2 emissions with positive effects against climate change.  

TIM will continue to follow the evolution of 5G applications, leveraging on its network infrastructure, its knowledge and its advanced research experience in several vertical sectors. Our recent tests in the smart city and smart agriculture areas - recently on display with the Venice Smart Control Room and the Voerzio Martini Winery - are aimed at making 5G not only an innovation engine, but also a trigger for smart and sustainable choices.