China Mobile and Qualcomm Technologies developed a roadside unit (RSU) for LTE-V2X communication which the operator is deploying as part of a pilot IoT project in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.

Developed by the operator’s IoT division and China Mobile Research Institute, the units are based on Qualcomm’s 9150 C-V2X chipset.

LTE-V2X is a core technology for intelligent transport systems (ITS), which have received strong support from the government in China. Using LTE-V2X, vehicles on the road will have the capability to directly communicate with RSUs, allowing drivers to swiftly obtain information on a variety of use cases, Qualcomm said in a statement.

Wei Chenguang, deputy general manager of China Mobile Research Institute, said: “With the prosperity of ITS, connected vehicles demand communication with lower latency, higher reliability and wider bandwidth. To address the challenge, China Mobile Research Institute…continues to work with ecosystem partners [to] set standards and to allocate spectrum for large-scale technical trials.”

C-V2X continues to gain worldwide support from the telecoms standards associations and the automotive ecosystem, including the 5G Automotive Association in which both China Mobile and Qualcomm are board members.

The companies said various live demonstrations by the Association have shown C-V2X’s readiness for the commercial deployment as early as 2019.