Chinese mobile transportation platform Didi Chuxing (DiDi) has chosen Airgain to deliver C-V2X (cellular vehicle-to-everything) connectivity for the pilot project of an autonomous vehicle (AV) in Shanghai, China.

The MULTIMAX FV ITS 3-in-1 high gain antenna offers two high gain directional antenna arrays, which operate in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) 5.9GHz frequency band and 1×1 multi-constellation GNSS (GPS/Beidou) for navigation.

The technology was customised for DiDi’s robo-taxi project after being tested and optimised on public roads in Shanghai’s Jiading district.

Airgain Asia general manager John Pan said: “The Airgain C-V2X solution was chosen based on the high gain and efficiency results, and the ability to perform at an advanced level when working on set routes.

“We’re thrilled to have been chosen by DiDi and we value our relationship with this leading-edge company. We are looking forward to further technological collaborations in support of the advancement of autonomous driving technologies.”

DiDi chief technology officer Zhang Bo added: “After searching the industry for wireless technology partners, Airgain was the obvious choice. We value this opportunity to leverage Airgain’s automotive antenna technology for the advancement of ITS application development.”

Airgain is headquartered in San Diego, California, and offers advanced antenna technologies that enable wireless networking in different markets such as consumer, enterprise and automotive.

Founded in 2016, DiDi provides on-demand taxi-hailing, private car-hailing and other smart transportation services to approximately 550 million users in China, Japan, Latin America and Australia.

In January last year, Didi Chuxing unveiled the DiDi Smart Transportation Brain integrated solution for smart city traffic management.

Developed in collaboration with the Chinese traffic management authorities, the new solution has been adopted by more than 20 cities in China.

The Chinese firm also planned to make aggregated, anonymised data from its globally available vehicle network to facilitate transportation AI research.