Germany's research ministry has agreed to help fund a
three-year research project aimed at developing a car-to-car
communications system based on wireless Lan (WLan)
technology.
The project, Network on Wheels (Now), succeeds an earlier
government-funded project called FleetNet.
It will be a major source of input into the European Car-2-Car
Communication Consortium (C2C CC), which is made up of several of
the Continent's largest car makers, according to Andreas Kaatz,
project manager at the German Aerospace Center, which is
co-ordinating the project on behalf of the research ministry.
The industry consortium, consisting of Germany's BMW,
DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen, France's Renault and Italy's Fiat,
aims to establish a European standard for wireless car-to-car
communications. With the help of this technology, the auto industry
plans to increase road traffic safety and efficiency while, at the
same time, developing new on-board information services and
applications.
But before the consortium members can agree to standards, they
need to know what works. That's the focus of Now which includes not
only the three German car makers in the C2C industry consortium but
also Siemens, NEC Deutschland and the Fraunhofer Institute for Open
Communications.
Researchers in the Now project will develop and test various
components of car-to-car communications systems in "ad hoc"
networks, using the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers) 802.11a and b wireless transmission standards and the
next-generation IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) communications
protocol, in addition to other standards and protocols, according
to Kaatz.
In these networks, cars serve as both senders and receivers as
well locators to collect and route information about road
conditions, traffic jams and more, he said.
The system will work when two or more vehicles are within radio
communications range. They connect automatically and establish an
ad hoc network. Because the range of a WLan link is limited to a
few hundred metres, every vehicle also serves as a router, allowing
messages to be sent via a multihop process to vehicles farther
away. The routing algorithm is based on the position of the
vehicles and is able to handle the typically fast changes of ad hoc
networks.
"For instance, information about a traffic jam in your lane
could be forwarded to cars in the opposite lane, to be passed back
to cars behind you so drivers are warned quickly of congestion
ahead," Kaatz said. "The trick is to develop sophisticated location
algorithms."
The car maker consortium hopes to have prototypes by the middle
of next year and specifications by the end of 2006, according to
the group's website
(www.car-to-car.org).
John Blau writes for IDG News Service