Multi-RAT Multi-Protocol OBUs for Vehicle-to-Everything Communications

The complexity and heterogeneity of the vehicular environment create opportunities for solutions enabling data exchange between on-the-road and remote entities by leveraging multiple radio interfaces and various messaging protocols. Al-though such a multi-interface configuration is available in some commercial vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication devices, they are typically very expensive and leverage closed-source software. In this work, we present an off-the-shelf On-Board Unit (OBU) equipped with IEEE 802.11p connectivity, which is seamlessly integrated with a 5G gateway to emulate the behaviour of a multi-radio multi-protocol OBU. A preliminary Proof-of-Concept (PoC) is developed, demonstrating minimal delay in data passing through the system components, thereby validating the feasibility of the proposed solution.