PROTON-PLATA

Project Overview                                  

For a few decades now, traffic information has been considered as necessary for the driver. The traffic information systems have evolved over time and nowadays almost every vehicle comes along with a RDS (Radio Data System) receiver that automatically delivers traffic messages to the driver. Nowadays, current in-vehicle navigation systems are already suited to deliver up-to-date traffic data and alternative route information to prevent from traffic congestion via TMC (Traffic Message Channel). However, future systems call for further improvements and additional road information to allow for continuously growing traffic safety and efficiency demands in order to cope with increasing traffic and road densities.

A promising technique to improve the level of granularity and actuality of traffic data can be found in the combination of local environment data and traffic data. C2X communications (i.e., communications among individual vehicles – Car2Car communication, C2C – as well as between vehicles and the road-side infrastructure –Car2Infrastructure communication, C2I) extends the driver's horizon and thus provides the driver with detailed information about immediate surroundings and safety-critical situations within the local environment. On the other hand, digital broadcast systems enable the driver with regional traffic data (i.e., long-term weatherforecasts and traffic alerts) managed by a central infrastructure controller. The combination of C2C and C2I technologies therefore enables entirely new safety functions.

SoftwareDefined Radio (SDR) has been identified as a key technology to enable the implementation of co-existent wireless communication systems within one identical hardware architecture. As a novel bearer technology, SDR paves the way to enable parallel data reception and transmission in vertical information networks using different communication standards. The application of one single hardware terminal for multiple radio standards appears as an attractive solution to ease hardware cost and integrational complexity, in particular for automotive use cases. SDR technology thus provides the appropriate technology framework for maximum flexibility, adaptivity and re-configurability of the system for the future deployment of next-generation wireless and advanced telematics services.

The target outcome of the joint PROTON/PLATA (PROgrammable Telematics ON-boardradio) project will define the architectural design of an SDR-based low-cost multi-standard radio platform for telematics including demonstration capabilities for dedicated use cases. An SDR communication testbed is being developed for vehicular integration to prove actual on-board vehicle communication requirements for safety applications. In particular, the PROTON/PLATA platform will be capable to support different communication standards simultaneously,e.g. C2X communications (WLAN IEEE 802.11x) and digital broadcast reception systems (e. g. Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) including traffic data services). Hereby, the main focus is based on the definition and investigation of co-existence scenarios for suchcommunication systems.

The target platform enables a high degree of flexibility to enable easy maintenance which allows for system development even before radio standard finalization. Moreover, emerging wireless standards like next-generation cellular standards can be easily integrated through software updates in the future.

The proof-of-concept will be tested based on simulations (using adiscrete event-simulator for vehicular use cases) as well as in arealistic traffic scenario within the large-scale C2X communicationsfield trial of the German research project simTD (Sichere Intelligente Mobilit simTD(Sichere Intelligente Mobilität – Testfeld Deutschland).

The project is carried out in the German-French DeuFrako framework. Partners on the French side are EURECOM, INRETS and Thales Communications, and on the German side the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and BMW Forschung und Technik GmbH. The project started in September 2008 and will run for four years. The German part of the project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

The French part of the project is funded by the National Agency for Research (ANR), and sponsored by the French Automotive cluster MOV’EO (Competitiveness Cluster in automobile and public transport R&D).