Blind spot detection reduces the risk of accidents during lane changes by monitoring the dangerous blind spot area
[26]. The blind spot area is a typically a moving target area that changes when car moves if we take the road infrastructure as reference point. Currently, the blind spot detection system operates via a variety of external sensors located on a car's bumpers and wing mirrors, which can detect if a person or vehicle enters your blind spot, notifying you via an audible or visual cue - typically, a warning light located in the car's wing mirror.
Wireless sensing technology can be utilized to detect obstacles that presents in car's blind spot area:
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Case I: Base stations on the roadside are already used to provide 5G coverage for communication, and the radio signals that are reflected can be used to sense the blind spot area of a car.
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Case II: Base stations on the roadside are already used to provide 5G coverage for communication, and the radio signals that are received by the UE (i.e. the car is a 3GPP UE, or there is a 3GPP UE such as smartphone on the car) can be used to sense the blind spot area of the car.
Any obstacle that presents in the car's blind spot area, no matter the obstacle is moving (e.g. car, motorcycle, walking human, animal etc) or static (building, tree), will affect the reflected/received signals. By deriving the characteristics of the affected signals, obstacle can be detected, and danger can be avoided. It is convenient to utilize current deployed 5G network system to achieve this blind spot detection.
This use case is to reuse 5.8 to describe the blind spot detection aspects.
MNO provides blind spot detection sensing service to different kinds of subscribers:
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Bob's car is a 5G UE and subscribes to this sensing service. His car has NR-based sensing technology and capabilities such as NR-based sensing capabilities, sensing processing capabilities are also provided to the MNO.
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Juan's car is not a 5G UE, but his 5G UE (smartphone) subscribes to this sensing service, where an application is installed on the 5G UE.
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Alex's car is not a 5G UE, an application installed on his car subscribes to this sensing service.
Laura has no subscription to the blind spot detection sensing service.
Step 1: Bob, Juan, Alex and Laura are friends and driving together to Alps skiing resort. At 8:00am, Bob starts from Street A, Juan and Alex start from Street B and Laura start cars from Street C. Bob, Juan and Alex trigger the blind spot detection sensing service separately.
Step 2: When received the service request, 5G system discovers and configures sensing transmitter(s) and sensing receiver(s) to track and monitor the moving car's blind spot area (from sensing transmitter's perspective), e.g.:
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Bob's car is a 5G UE and has NR-based sensing capabilities, 5G system configures base station(s) as sensing transmitter and Bob's car as the sensing receiver. The moving blind spot area is tracked by Bob's 5G UE.
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Juan's car and Alex's car are not 5G UE. 5G system configures base station(s) as sensing transmitter and sensing receiver. Juan's car's moving blind spot area and Alex's car's moving blind spot area are separately tracked by 5G base station.
Step 3: 3GPP sensing data is collected by sensing receiver and transferred to the network sensing processing entity to derive the sensing result, which is then exposed to the service consumer to fetch out whether there is obstacle presence in the blind spot area, e.g.
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Bob's car is a 5G V2X UE and has processing capabilities, 5G system authorizes 5G UE as sensing processing entity.
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Juan's car is not a 5G V2X UE, but Juan has his smartphone (5G UE) carried in car, 5G system authorizes 5G UE as sensing processing entity.
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Alex has no 5G UE on board, 5G network processes the 3GPP sensing data to derive sensing result.
Step 4: A car is moving very fast from Street A to Street B to Street C and presents sequentially in Bob's, Juan's Alex's and Laura's blind spot area.
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Bob is changing lane, the moving car is detected and Bob safely changed lane.
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Juan and Alex turning left, the moving car is detected and they safely turned right.
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Laura is overtaking a truck, the moving car suddenly presents in the blind spot area, Laura forgets the over-shoulder view and hits the moving car.
Bob, Juan and Alex drive safely to the Alps skiing resort and enjoy their holiday thanks to the blind spot detection sensing service.
Laura is in hospital.
None.
[PR 5.31.6-1]
The 5G System shall be able to provide sensing service to track a moving target sensing service area.