Sunswift Racing has incorporated Ericsson intelligent link bonding across racing and support vehicles ahead of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.
One of the world’s leading innovation and engineering challenges driving decarbonisation through sustainable mobility, the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge is a racing event for solar-powered cars running from 24–31 August 2025 in a 3,000km-long route from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia.
Sunswift Racing is a team of innovators at the University of New South Wales in Australia, working to redefine the future of sustainable transport through the research and development of prototype electric cars. Led by team principal Richard Hopkins, the team includes academics, senior and executive leadership groups, and undergraduate students.
Ericsson believes that with real-time access to data enabled with wireless connectivity services, the Sunswift team will be collecting and using live telemetry data during the race. This includes live data about the solar car’s battery, electric motor, solar panel and vehicle speedometer.
It adds that reliable connectivity will also be vital for live video, IP push-to-talk communication for status reporting, real-time race video streaming for the team’s YouTube channel and reliable internet access.
Inaugurated in 1987, the race aims to showcase the development of advanced automotive technology and promote alternatives to conventional vehicle engines. The organisers believe that while solar cars test the ultimate boundaries of energy efficiency, they also provide insights into the capabilities of everyday vehicle technology at the heart of all electric cars.
Each car in the race uses solar panels no more than six square metres in area, and competitors rely on race and vehicle performance data to make strategic decisions during the week-long event.
Ericsson’s intelligent link bonding technology will see use in the race’s wireless wide area network (WAN) communications, combining multiple WAN links – cellular, satellite or wired – into a single, logical connection. It is said to use unique traffic steering and cellular intelligence features to make decisions about how traffic is distributed.
Ericsson Cradlepoint ruggedised R1900 routers connected to 5G and satellite links are managed with real-time cloud and device operating software to provide multi-carrier connectivity back to Sunswift headquarters. The intelligent link bonding will be used to optimise the bandwidth of all available WAN links with the aim of delivering consistent performance and always-on connectivity over cellular and satellite-supporting uninterrupted live telemetry data sharing and video streaming.
The intelligent link bonding technology is designed to enhance resiliency and performance, and is said to have three features, namely: flow duplication for high resiliency; flow balancing for link optimisation and cost savings; and bandwidth aggregation for increased bandwidth.
“This next evolution of uninterrupted connectivity from Ericsson will enable our team to perform at their peak during the upcoming race,” said Hopkins. “The incredible success that Sunswift has had over the years, supported by continuous innovation in technology from partners like Ericsson, has enabled us to launch P-ONE Technology, an agile, commercialisation spin-out of Sunswift Racing, backed by UNSW and the Australian fovernment’s Trace Trailblazer programme.
“Working with some of the best technology providers in the world, our mission is to transform cutting-edge research into market-ready, automotive solutions through industry and government partnerships.”
Archana Khetan, senior vice-president of enterprise wireless solutions at Ericsson, added: “As more businesses adopt multi-WAN strategies, managing these various connections intelligently is becoming essential. Showing how well this works in one of the world’s most challenging race environments underscores the value of this technology in any enterprise environment.”