Consortium for vehicle-to-vehicle communications sets to work

Leading carmakers team up to develop a shared standard.

Munich. Europe's top six car manufacturers - Audi, BMW Group, DaimlerChrysler,
Fiat, Renault and Volkswagen - have combined forces in the so called '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.

Further information at www.car-2-car.org