Communication Architectures and Services for Intelligent Transport Systems

Standardization Initiatives

One of the most significant characteristic of the ITS context is the amount of agents that have to cooperate in the definition of a communication architecture. These agents embrace vehicle manufacturers; ISPs (Internet Service Providers) with a large heterogeneity in the access network; Internet mobility operators that aim at managing the mobility of the ongoing communications; governmental organizations that are expected to legislate the infrastructure deployment and its utilization; and standardization bodies who are in charge of defining standardized protocols and procedures. Having such a variety, the introduction of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the ITS context requires strong mutual effort for decision taking and best solution design.

Due to its major role in the design of communication architectures, this section focuses on the standardization initiatives that have been undertaken throughout standardization organizations like the ISO, ETSI or the IEEE. It is worth pointing that having detected that ITS is an essential technology, standardization organizations have established ad-hoc working groups between the ETSI, IEEE, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), ISO and ITU (International Telecommunication Union) for joint development of specifications. We next describe the communication architectures that are currently being standardized.