Fujikura Ltd. (President & CEO: Naoki Okada), in collaboration with 11 companies including Kansai Transmission and Distribution, Inc., conducted a demonstration of safe driving support and a demonstration of watching-over support in Sanda City, Hyogo Prefecture between April 18 and 22, 2022.
The demonstration of safe driving support was performed to confirm the effectiveness of the safe driving support system for local bus services by vehicle-to-infrastructure communication using electric poles and by vehicle-to-vehicle communication with bicycles at intersections with poor visibility without traffic lights.
Specifically, information communication devices installed on bicycles and electric poles around intersections detect information such as the speed and position of pedestrians and bicycles from blind spots and alert bus drivers when an accident is likely to occur, thereby supporting safe driving.

In this demonstration, Fujikura installed 60 GHz millimeter-wave wireless communication devices each equipped with our own 60 GHz communication module to two electric poles fitted with sensors for detecting the dynamic information of pedestrians, etc. and ITS wireless devices for conducting vehicle-to-infrastructure communication with buses, and to a pole fitted with an LED electroluminescence panel, thereby constructing a control signal network connecting three poles.
The optimum installation positions of sensors, display panels and other devices differ according to the shape of the intersection, traffic volume and so on, however, devices have conventionally been installed into a single electric pole. In this demonstration, an ideal device layout was realized by connecting devices dispersed over three points using the low-latency 60 GHz millimeter-wave wireless communication device. Thanks to this optimum installation positions, we succeeded to transmit the risk information captured by the sensors to the LED electroluminescence panel and the ITS wireless devices via the 60 GHz millimeter-wave wireless communication, thereby supporting safe driving by alerting bus drivers in a timely fashion.
The 60 GHz millimeter-wave wireless communication device is easy in that it requires no license to use; moreover, characteristics such as low interference, low latency, high speed and large capacity mean that it is a promising technology for application to wireless relay networks in smart cities installed with various sensors and cameras. This demonstration confirmed the effectiveness of its application to such wireless relay networks.

Fujikura is committed to contributing to the realization of a better society by substantiating various applications of 60 GHz millimeter-wave wireless communication through these demonstrations.

[Explanation of terms]
Vehicle-to-infrastructure communication: Two-way communication between the vehicle and the communication equipment installed on the road designed to offer various driving assistance.
Vehicle-to-vehicle communication: Two-way communication between vehicles designed to offer various driving assistance.
ITS wireless: The wireless system that connects vehicles to vehicles, and vehicles to roadside infrastructure equipment utilizing ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) dedicated frequency (760 MHz).