Reference design embodies vehicle-vehicle interconnection systems

July 08, 2013 // By Christoph Hammerschmidt
Cohda Wireless and NXP Semiconductors have announced MK4, the latest generation of connected car anti-collision technology based on the NXP/Cohda RoadLINK chipset. The chipset addresses both Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) implementations, collectively referred to as V2X.

Building on the MK3 unit, used widely in V2X trials globally, the MK4 will serve as the reference design for series-production of the first generation of connected vehicles, expected to launch in 2015. The first chipset integrated with all of NXP's multi-standard software-defined radio technology, the MK4 is half the size of its predecessor and provides a flexible, scalable solution while significantly reducing BOM costs.

Compared with competitor solutions, the Cohda/NXP RoadLINK chipset exchanges messages across an extended range and at high speed, cutting 'time to react’ and communicating potential hazards and safety-critical scenarios significantly faster than conventional applications. Supporting both DSRC (IEEE 802.11p) and Wi-Fi (802.11abgn) wireless standards, the RoadLINK chipset can upload and access data via home Wi-Fi and hotspot connections.

Cohda Wireless’ “connected car” V2X technology allows cars to communicate wirelessly with each other and with traffic infrastructure, exchanging data including location, speed and direction and allowing 360-degree driver awareness to address road safety concerns, reduce collisions, warn of potential hazards, avoid traffics jams and ultimately increase driver safety, prevent traffic congestion and reduce CO 2 emissions.

The MK4 represents a complete solution incorporating Cohda's network layer, facilities layer and applications layer software products. It supports international standards including IEEE 1609 for US operation, ETSI TC-ITS for European use and the Japanese standard at 760 MHz (ARIB STD-T109). It comes with a Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows customers to configure and evolve Cohda applications to meet their own specific requirements.