Experimental Study of EV-DO Performance in Telematics Applications

With the new trend of extending Internet connections to the car, EV-DO is an important 3G wireless technology to be considered in the telematics industry. EV-DO is optimized for mobile broadband data delivery. However, its performance is not fully understood for telematics applications because telematics products have some fundamental differences from typical data modems. The purpose of this paper is to characterize the EV-DO performance on a commercial network through extensive field experiments for both stationary and high-speed mobility cases. In order to show a whole picture, we take into account many variables in our study, such as antenna diversity, link quality, and operation mode. Test results are presented along with details of the analysis. An option to enhance EV-DO performance for vehicle applications without significantly increasing cost is also proposed.