Standards set for roadside-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle communication

WASHINGTON (June 12, 2002) — Portions of a standard for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) that would enable roadside-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle communication at very high data transfer rates at 5.9GHz are now in place following their approval by an industry working group.

The new DSRC standard extends the IEEE 802.11a technology into vehicles by describing a medium access control and physical layer specification.

The standard, E2213-02 – Standard Specification for Telecommunications and Information Exchange Between Roadside and Vehicle Systems, provides specific requirements for the Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specifications for DSRC in the 5 GHz band. This standard was successfully balloted on May 10, by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International, through its Subcommittee E 17.51 Vehicle Roadside Communication. The subcommittee reviewed the comments to the standard during its recent meeting on June 3-5. Work on this standard writing effort was initiated in August 2001, after an exhaustive technology selection and testing process.

These portions of the communications process enable accurate and valid message delivery with communications units that are primarily mounted in high-speed moving vehicles.

“This is a major development and clearly a success story in terms of the standards development effort and industry participation” stated Paul Najarian, director of Telecommunications at ITS America.

“The completion of the physical layer standard paves the way for ITS America to undertake the licensing and service rules efforts with the Federal Communications Commission,” Najarian said.

ITS America, an association of transportation-related technology companies, said it planned to ask the FCC to reference the approved standard in order to ensure national interoperability. In turn, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by the FCC is expected in late fall 2002, the group said.

Additional activities still remain both in terms of the national and international standards development effort for DSRC.

The development of a layer manager and the adaptation of the Application Layer developed by IEEE are necessary elements to complete the DSRC suite of standards.

In addition, this standard constitutes the North American input to the international standardization efforts underway through ISO/TC 204 Working Group 16 regarding Communications Air Interface Long and Medium range (CALM) at 5 GHz.