0 Introduction
Autonomous driving technology involves a multidisciplinary convergence, which mainly uses artificial intelligence, visual computing, radar, monitoring devices, and global positioning systems to work together to enable cars to drive automatically and safely without active operation[1]. As a new generation of communication technology standards, 5G's high-speed, large-capacity, and low-latency features can not only provide the ultimate user experience, but also enable everything to interconnect with each other, opening a new era of breakthrough limitations and accelerated progress[2]. The emergence of 5G has undoubtedly accelerated the development of autonomous driving technology and the landing of the autonomous driving industry, providing a guarantee for the safety and efficiency of automatic driving.
1 Overview of the integration of 5G + autonomous driving industry
With the issuance of 5G commercial licenses, China has officially entered the first year of 5G commercialization. The "White Paper on The Ten Scenarios of the 5G Era" [3] points out that the Internet of Vehicles is one of the important application scenarios of 5G, and the maturity of 5G technology has brought technological innovation to many industries, and automatic driving technology is no exception. 5G can meet the stringent requirements of key technologies such as autonomous driving, remote control and platoon driving for network security, reliability, low latency, and high bandwidth connectivity [4]. 5G technology has key characteristics such as large bandwidth, low latency, and edge computing, which will also be applied to autonomous driving technology to solve the problems of autonomous driving in the 4G era and promote the commercial landing of the autonomous driving industry.
On September 19, 2018, under the guidance of relevant national units, a 5G autonomous driving alliance composed of 47 members, including universities, research institutes, communications and automobile manufacturing enterprises, and industry authorities, was established. The alliance will lead the study of the convergence of the two frontier areas of 5G and autonomous driving, and collaborate to study key technologies in this convergence field. At the same time, the alliance will be committed to the research of 5G autonomous driving industry standards, and further explore and discover new application scenarios based on 5G autonomous driving. In addition, the alliance also proposed the "5G Autonomous Driving Leadership Plan". In the new year, the members of the alliance will focus on the construction of test sites, the application of major scientific research projects, 5G application services, and the formulation of industry standards. On January 8, 2019, China Automobile Research Institute, China Telecom Chongqing Company and Datang Mobile signed the first strategic agreement on the co-construction of the 5G autonomous driving application platform in China, and the three companies promised to realize the demonstration application of autonomous driving based on 5G network as soon as possible, and the autonomous vehicle based on the automatic driving demonstration application can be tested and studied in the 5G communication environment.
When autonomous driving meets the 5G era, more commercial landing cases are still unlocking, and some typical cases of 5G+ automatic driving have been unlocked, such as automatic truck formation driving, vehicle remote/remote driving [5], 5G+ automatic driving technology is applied to special vehicles (5G autonomous sanitation cleaning robot, 5G autonomous driving road cleaning robot, 5G autonomous garbage collection robot, 5G automatic driving cleaning and washing integrated sanitation robot), etc.
2 Global 5G+ autonomous driving patent analysis
2.1 Global Patent Filing Trends
The status of patent applications related to 5G+ autonomous driving worldwide from 2012 to 2019 is shown in Figure 1. By the end of 2019, there were a total of 30,447 patent applications related to 5G+ autonomous driving worldwide, and 16,417 were merged.
Figure 1 Annual trend of global patent applications for 5G+ autonomous driving technology (Data source: Intellectual Property Center, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology)
It can be seen from the annual trend of global patent applications for 5G+ autonomous driving that the number of patent applications for 5G+ autonomous driving has shown an overall growth trend. In 2012, the number of patent applications related to 5G + automatic driving technology was 1221, and the global 5G process in this period was still in the pre-research stage, but for global automotive companies in this period, the research and development of autonomous driving technology has reached a stable stage of development, and various car companies have laid out patents and imagined the integration of autonomous driving technology and future 5G technology. From 2014 to 2017, the number of 5G + autonomous driving patent applications climbed rapidly, and the number of patent applications in 2015 increased by about 500 compared with 2014, which is related to the significant acceleration of the pace of 5G technology research and development and standardization in this period, and major companies around the world have invested in 5G research; from 2015 to 2017, the annual number of applications for 5G+ autonomous driving patents exceeded 300, and the number of patent applications reached a peak in 2017. This is because the release of the 5G new air interface non-independent networking standard 3GPP R15 in 2017 has greatly spawned the development of 5G+ autonomous driving technology. Due to the lag in patent data disclosure, the number of patent applications available for searchability in 2018 and 2019 showed a downward trend.
2.2 Geographical distribution of patents worldwide
The target countries for patent applications for 5G+ autonomous driving are mainly concentrated in China, the United States, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Europe and Japan, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Global patent target countries/regions of 5G+ autonomous driving technology (Data source: Intellectual Property Center of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology)
As a country with sufficient capital and strength to compete in the 5G+ autonomous driving market in the world, China has become an important market for traditional car companies, Internet companies, technology companies, etc. in the world to compete for patent layout, with patent applications in China as high as 31.49%, ranking first; patent applications in the United States ranked second with 20.48%, which shows that the United States is also an important strategic market in the field of 5G+ autonomous driving; and 16.93% of patent cooperation agreements (Patent). Cooperation Treaty, PCT) applications may enter PCT member states, and the development of global patent layout has become an important patent layout strategy for enterprises, which is the main reason for the high proportion of PCT applications; in addition, with the continuous development of 5G + autonomous driving technology, the huge competitive space and development opportunities in Europe and Japan are gradually being favored by companies in various countries.
2.3 Legal status of patent applications worldwide
From the perspective of the legal status of 5G+ automatic driving, 49% of the world's 5G+ autonomous driving technology patents are under review, the proportion of valid authorized patents is 21%, and 30% of the patents have expired, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 Legal status of global patent applications for 5G+ autonomous driving technology (Data source: Intellectual Property Center of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology)
The release of 5G NR non-standalone networking standards and 5G NR independent networking standards has greatly promoted the integration of 5G and automatic driving technology, and many companies have laid out patents that rely on 5G technology to achieve autonomous driving, which is also the main reason why the number of 5G+ autonomous driving patent applications currently under review in the world accounts for 49% (14 373) of the total number of applications. At present, 21% (6 258) of 5G+ autonomous driving patents have been patented worldwide, because some companies with a keen sense of smell have laid out 5G+ autonomous driving technology patents as early as the release of the first version of the 5G standard 5G NR non-independent networking standard in 2017, and have obtained patents after more than two years by the end of 2019. In addition, 30% (8,893) of the world's patents for 5G+ autonomous driving have expired, which shows that the quality of patent applications in the early stage of 5G+ autonomous driving technology research and development is not high, but there are also many patents that have not paid the annual patent fee or revoked themselves.
2.4 Major technical areas of global patents
It can be seen from the cluster map of the main technical fields of the 5G+ automatic driving global patent that the intelligent decision-making and control technology and vehicle collaboration technology of 5G to improve wireless technology and automatic driving are the two major layout directions of the global patented technology of 5G+ automatic driving.
Patents for improved 5G wireless technology that support autonomous driving mainly involve vehicles to everything/Device-to-device (V2X/D2D), resource allocation, delay, control signals, synchronization signals, reference signals, discovery signals, and other directions, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4 Main technical areas of global patents for 5G+ autonomous driving technology (Data source: Intellectual Property Center of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and Innography database)
As shown in the figure, V2X/D2D, resource allocation, delay, and control signal four technical directions of patent applications are more, of which, V2X / D2D direction of the patent application volume of 1 792, V2X with its low latency, high reliability network connection interaction can make autonomous vehicles real mass production, which is also the reason why many enterprises scramble to layout related patents; there are 1 302 patent applications in the direction of resource allocation, mostly for how to efficiently use 5G resources to file patent applications There are 1 296 patent applications for the direction of delay, low latency is very critical for automatic driving, and it is of great significance for the study of 5G low latency, which can greatly improve the safety of autonomous vehicles and reduce the occurrence of traffic accidents; in addition, the control signal is also an important layout direction, and the number of patent applications for the control signal is 1 077.
The development of 5G technology has greatly promoted the intelligent decision-making and control technology of autonomous driving technology and the evolution of vehicle collaboration technology. Intelligent decision-making and control technology is to obtain environmental information through the vehicle's perception system to make decisions and judgments and control the driving of the vehicle, for this technology has applied for 1 523 patents; vehicle collaboration technology aims to achieve two-way, real-time and efficient information exchange through the intelligent communication system, providing full-time space-time information for 5G+ autonomous vehicles, and maximizing the safety and smoothness of the road traffic system. The direction of vehicle synergy technology includes vehicle networking and proximity service technology, of which 787 patent applications have been filed for vehicle networking technology and 1 267 patent applications for adjacent services in the global patent application for 5G + autonomous driving.
3 Patent analysis of 5G+ autonomous driving in China
3.1 General Trend of Patent Applications in China
By the end of 2019, a total of 9,588 patent applications for 5G+ autonomous driving had been filed in China, and 7,510 were merged with the same family.
Figure 5 Overall trend of patent applications for 5G+ autonomous driving technology in China (Data source: Intellectual Property Center of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology)
It can be seen from the annual patent application trend chart of 5G + autonomous driving in China that the annual patent application trend in China is basically consistent with the global patent annual application trend, and the overall growth trend is shown (see Figure 5). After the annual number of patent applications in China exceeded 1,000 in 2015, the number of patent applications increased steadily every year, and the number of patent applications in China reached 1626 in 2017, and the number of patent applications in China contributed 50.2% of the global patent applications in this year. Considering that patents have an 18-month disclosure period, from the current point of view, the number of 5G+ autonomous driving patent applications in China in 2018 and 2019 shows a downward trend, and the public data of patent applications in these two years is insufficient to reflect the actual patent applications. With the release of the 5G NEW AIR INTERFACE standalone networking standard 3GPP R15 in July 2018 and the promotion of the standardization of 3GPP R16, it is expected that the number of applications in 2018 and 2019 will continue to increase compared with the past.
3.2 Distribution of patented technology in China
From the perspective of the main technical fields of 5G + autonomous driving patents in China, the intelligent decision-making and control technology, vehicle collaboration technology and positioning technology of 5G improvement wireless technology and automatic driving are the two major layout directions of 5G+ autonomous driving patented technology in China, as shown in Figure 6. Patents for 5G improved wireless technology mainly involve delay, V2X/D2D, resource allocation, control signals and other directions. Among them, there are 947 patents in China involving the direction of delay, 701 patent applications involving V2X/D2D, and 170 patent applications involving control signals. Compared with the technical distribution of global patent applications for 5G+ autonomous driving, the patent applications in China have added 205 new patents related to packet transmission and transmission and channel state information (CSI) feedback (170) in the direction of 5G improved wireless technology.
Figure 6 5G+ autonomous driving technology in China patent technology field (Data source: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Intellectual Property Center and innography database)
The technical directions for improving autonomous driving technology using 5G include intelligent decision-making and control technology, vehicle collaboration technology and positioning technology. The number of patent applications for intelligent decision-making and control technology in China was 166, and the number of patent applications for vehicle collaboration technology, including vehicle networking technology and vehicle information interaction technology, was 341 in China. Compared with the global patent application distribution of 5G+ autonomous driving, the technical direction of using 5G to achieve automatic driving technology improvement has added positioning technology. High-precision positioning is a prerequisite for the path planning of autonomous vehicles, which can compare the environmental perception results of autonomous vehicles with high-precision maps to obtain the precise position and attitude of vehicles in high-precision maps, which greatly improves the reliability of automatic driving. Therefore, positioning technology has become an important direction for patent applications for 5G + autonomous driving technology in China, with 183 patent applications.
4 Conclusion
5G technology empowers the automotive industry, helps the development of autonomous driving technology, and makes the development of the autonomous driving industry enter the fast lane. This paper focuses on the patent situation of 5G + autonomous driving, starting from the two dimensions of global and China, mainly studies the patent application trend, patent geographical distribution, patent legal status and patent layout in the main technical fields of patents, and recommends that domestic enterprises further strengthen the research and development of key technologies, maintain the growth of applications, and coordinate the layout of domestic and overseas markets; it is recommended that technology companies should accelerate the research and development of 5G technology to help the landing of 5G+ autonomous driving technology; and it is recommended that the state and provinces and cities accelerate the promotion of 5G+ The formulation of autonomous driving technical standards and laws and regulations has promoted the development of the 5G+ autonomous driving industry.
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About the Author
Sudan, an engineer of the Western Branch of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, whose main research direction is standard essential patent evaluation and patent analysis in the direction of 3G/4G/5G and wifi.
Yan Kun, Deputy Director of the Forensic Identification and Patent Standards Research Department of the Intellectual Property and Innovation Development Center of china Academy of Information and Communications Technology, is mainly engaged in the evaluation and patent analysis of standard essential patents in the directions of 3G/4G/5G, audio and video, Internet of Vehicles, wifi and other directions.
Li Wenyu, Ph.D. in Engineering, Deputy Director of intellectual property and Innovation Development Center, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, is a senior engineer.