Vodafone Group, Continental powers AI with Netrounds

5G-ready road users protection project, by Vodafone and Continental, has been successfully tested with state-of-the-art technologies such as mobile edge computing and Netrounds real-time testing active monitoring in order to decrease traffic fatalities in the future.

Telecommunications group Vodafone and technology company Continental have showcased first results of their innovation partnership and demonstrated how new technologies, including Netrounds for real-time testing and active monitoring, can assist in preventing thousands of road accidents every year.

The Vodafone and Continental project uses Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) to enable a new type of automotive application for road safety features in connected cars powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The application works when connected cars stream pre-processed sensor data over the mobile network to MEC cloud nodes for real-time analytics and instant decision-making processes.

The application on edge cloud nodes applies AI algorithms to determine if an action is required. The end-to-end system is latency sensitive and relies on insight into network conditions as provided by Netrounds.

Netrounds programmable, active testing and monitoring solution allows service providers like Vodafone and large enterprise customers, like Continental, to automate assurance of the entire service lifecycle, from activation testing, to ongoing active monitoring and remote automated troubleshooting for when any issues arise.

Vodafone identified Netrounds as the preferred vendor for this project to solve the following needs:

•Programmable and scalable software that can grow and adapt with evolving services and network needs.
•Comprehensive reporting for service activation tests every time a network service is configured or updated.
•Quality assurance of the data plane in real-time, using continuous active monitoring of key performance indicators of the network-to-network interface.
•Automated and comprehensive remote troubleshooting.

“Our vision of a world without traffic fatalities and with much fewer accidents is given a chance to becoming a reality. Following successful tests with our partner Continental, our conclusion is that using Netrounds’ active testing and monitoring solution for real-time analytics has been crucial in measuring latency and understanding overall networking performance,” said Guenter Klas, Senior Manager in Vodafone Group R&D. “Real-time analytics regarding network behavior grows in importance when our cellular networks support safety-critical applications.”

“Being a part of this important project with Vodafone and Continental shows that Netrounds can help identify just about any network problem, whether it be in multi-cloud environments, service chains, IoT and now automotive safety. We are able to automate both testing and active real-time monitoring needed to measure critical KPIs. This use case demands a stable and dependable network communication that is hyper sensitive to latency and other key metrics in order to meet their main goal of safer road conditions,” said Mats Nordlund, CEO & Co-Founder, Netrounds. “We are excited to see what the future of this project brings and the opportunities we can reach with mobile communication as we move into the 5G era.”