Consortium
for vehicle-to-vehicle communications sets to work
Europe’s top six car
manufacturers – Audi, BMW Group, DaimlerChrysler, Fiat, Renault
and Volkswagen – have combined forces in the Car-2-Car Communication
Consortium (C2C CC).
One aim of this body
is to develop a Europe-wide open industry standard for communications
from car to car and between vehicles and infrastructure facilities.
Beyond that, the C2C CC plans to push for the allocation of the
requisite radio frequency to enable this, as well as developing
and testing suitable radio communication systems.
With the aid of car-to-car
communications, the selective forwarding of information helps to
optimize traffic flow and appreciably enhances traffic safety.
Here’s an example:
if a vehicle encounters a critical situation such as congestion,
fog, ice or an accident, it passes the relevant information
on to all affected road users in the immediate vicinity
of the danger spot. Traffic approaching from further away
is given ample warning and can respond to the situation.
In this spontaneous
information network, each vehicle can take on the role of
a sender, receiver or router. It allows a chain of information
to be built up, rather like a relay race. With the aid of
this process, known as multi-hopping, information can be
spread further afield to cover a substantial distance.
The data exchange between
vehicles is made possible by ad-hoc networks. These short-distance
connections are spontaneously created between the vehicles as the
need arises and can organize themselves without the help of any
external infrastructure. The technology is based on wireless LAN.
The efficiency of car-to-car
communications increases with the number of vehicles on the market
which feature the requisite equipment.
Independently of this, the
technology can also be used for communications between vehicles and external
infrastructures. Possible deployment scenarios include wireless fault diagnosis
and downloading digital maps.
