Online updates evolved for downloadable patching of computer operating systems but over cellular networks were first deployed proactively on a large scale at the start of the smartphone era by mobile operators themselves. This has led to the telco sector becoming by far the most advanced in employing over-the-air (OTA) updates, both in penetration and maturity as they are routinely used to keep the smartphone OS up to date as well as issue new versions.
The field has expanded in sophistication, leading to over-the-air service provisioning (OTASP) or over-the-air parameter administration (OTAPA), where handsets are configured remotely with the necessary settings to access services, which can be via SMS to update data in SIM cards, for example. Naturally, therefore, standards have emerged to ensure these processes are independent of handset manufacturer or operator, overseen in particular by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).
But then the IoT emerged and with 5G on the horizon, the stage was set for OTA updating and provisioning to expand from its telco heartland into other verticals, of which automotive, agriculture, industrial and the aviation drone sector have been first to start adopting.
The applications of OTA in these sectors are more diverse and can be more complex than in the telco arena, but the principles are the same. The advent of 5G will expand the scope of OTA more in these sectors than perhaps in the telco space, partly because the additional speed, capacity and low latency will open up new avenues in predictive maintenance and even remote control.
At the same though, OTA in these fields is in its infancy, though most advanced in both penetration and maturity in automotive. It is also quite advanced for agricultural machinery, but penetration is lower because it is confined to a subset of the latest equipment such as tractors and harvesters. Many farmers have older equipment they cannot afford to replace until the end of the cycle.
Industrial is the fastest emerging sector because of the great scope for cost savings and automation, as well as interest in exploring the low latency potential of 5G for remote operation, extending the utility of OTA further. The idea is that proliferating swarms of robots, not just in manufacturing but also other sectors such as agriculture, would have dynamic code bases updateable in real time without disrupting operation, to fine-tune task handling, correct small errors, introduce new features, or even redeploy the machine completely. This though is for the future and subject of various scientific papers indicating how current OTA frameworks could be expanded for such purposes.
Meanwhile, automotive is where many of the early innovations have occurred, often through partnerships between relevant players in the ecosystem. Not surprisingly, Tesla was in at the outset with its Autopilot Driver Assistance System featuring OTA updates, launched in 2015. Tesla then went on to incorporate the Smart Delta technology of Red Bend Software, part of the US group Harman International focusing on automotive systems. As the name suggests, this is designed to enable software to be upgraded in the field just by changing the relevant part rather than having to download the whole file, having been developed initially for mobile phone updates.
Other automotive makers have piled in and expanded use of frameworks set up for OTA updates. It is worth remembering that cars now house almost as much computational power as they do horsepower, with up to 100 electronic control units (ECUs) running up to 20m lines of code, so bugs do surface regularly, sometimes eliciting problems that prompt expensive recalls. At around $90 average per car, a recall of 1m vehicles, not an uncommon total, can cost approaching $100m. Furthermore, as the number of ECUs and their degree of integration has proliferated, so have the number of recalls, which rose 32% between 2018 and 2019 in Europe, with a 25% growth in number of models affected, according to the Car Recalls website.
Some of these losses can be averted if the problems are detected proactively and the bugs fixed remotely. Daimler Benz, for this reason, has extended its mbrace2 OTA network to generate automatic alerts sent both to owners and authorized dealers when any exception thresholds are breached, even if there is no impending mechanical problem. In some cases this has pre-empted recalls, with relevant updates usually sent over 4G networks at present.
Autonomous driving is the next big frontier for the automotive sector and OTA over 5G will play a critical role as the field progresses towards Level 4 automation where the vehicle drives itself entirely in limited areas, and then Level 5 when self-driving is extended almost everywhere. The aim again is to enable updates to be sent without disrupting operations at times when the vehicle might be driving itself. The degree of proactive monitoring will also have to be stepped up, enabling vehicles to ‘abort’ safely in the event of a fault being detected. Under Level 4 and beyond the vehicle can no longer rely on the driver to take control almost immediately in such event.
Meanwhile the agricultural sector is forging ahead with advanced applications, even if it lags behind automotive on the deployment curve. South Korea’s MNO LG Uplus recently demonstrated one application with great cost saving potential at a time when agricultural labor is in increasingly short supply in developed nations at least. This was for unmanned field cultivation with a tractor remotely controlled over a 6,600 square meter field using a real time kinematic (RTK) system incorporating a technique developed for satellite navigation for 5G-based precision positioning.
This enabled the tractor to calculate its position down to at most the nearest 10cm and often better, to follow a pre-set path on the map. This was just a demonstration that would require greater sophistication to deal with all exceptions for example, but is a sign of the potential 5G holds in agriculture.