Wireless traffic safety network for incident and weather information

Vehicular wireless communications with Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) utilizing Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication tools are key technological approaches in efforts to improve traffic safety and efficiency. The European project WiSafeCar (under the Celtic cluster of the EUREKA network) has as one of its key targets to develop an intelligent hybrid wireless traffic safety network between vehicles and infrastructure. Vehicle based sensors and observations are exploited to generate intelligent real-time services on a service platform for vehicles. WiSafeCar considers not only urban areas, but also the special case of operating in rural areas where no high-density base station (road side unit) network for V2I communication is available. Hybrid communication of cellular and IEEE 802.11p based wireless vehicular networking has been employed, with the primary objective of the cellular communication to provide an alternative solution in areas outside of the range of the wireless vehicular network. Traffic safety will be enhanced by providing accurate and timely location based information about incidents, accidents and adverse weather. The WiSafeCar application provides a platform for true bi-directional Internet-like networking tailored for a vehicular environment. This paper presents the general system overview and field measurements, simulations and pilot test systems realized in Finlan