Software Radio Reconfiguration Enables Upgrades to
In-Vehicle and IoT Radio Systems
Most
new cars sold today offer connectivity as a feature, whether standard
or optional. Customers expect their navigation systems to be connected,
to download real time traffic information and map updates. Vehicle
manufacturers increasingly provide remote diagnostics and vehicle
software updates. And yet a fundamental problem remains: today these
vehicles use 2G, 3G or 4G mobile networks to connect, while long before
the end of their useful lives, 5G networks will be more common. The
complete lifecycle of a vehicle is significantly longer than that of a
mobile device, and completely out of step.
ETSI’s
Technical Committee for Reconfigurable Radio Systems has developed a
system which can help solve this and similar issues. ETSI’s Software
Radio Reconfiguration model provides a modular and scalable solution to
the challenge of deploying and using software radio systems. The
solution, described in a recent ETSI white paper and in the EN 303 146
series of European Standards, allows a gradual and stepwise deployment
of software reconfigurable radio. This enables device manufacturers to
gradually implement software reconfigurable radios, developing
confidence at each step of the way.
The
ETSI Software Radio Reconfiguration model provides solutions to the
following issues which all software radio systems must address:
- How to transfer and install radio software components in a secure way
- How to provide access to new software components to a user/operator
- How
to deal with device certification and type approval when new radio
software components can modify the radio behaviour of a device
- How to provide software portability and achieve efficient radio performance
- How to gradually evolve a system towards software reconfigurability
With
the use of software reconfigurable radio, the radio system on board a
vehicle can evolve and improve over time, with new software upgrades.
Software reconfigurable radios will also help in other situations. For
example, security concerns may require the upgrade and patching of radio
systems deployed in the field. Yet manual intervention would be costly
in the case of vehicles, or even impossible in the case of inaccessible
IoT devices.
Source: ETSI media announcement