Vehicular Communication Systems

Vehicular Communication Systems are an emerging type of networks in which vehicles and roadside units are the communicating nodes; providing each other with information, such as safety warnings and traffic information. As a cooperative approach, vehicular communication systems can be more effective in avoiding accidents and traffic congestions than if each vehicle tries to solve these problems individually.

Generally vehicular networks are considered to contain two types of nodes; vehicles and roadside stations. Both are Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) devices. DSRC works in 5.9 GHz band with bandwidth of 75 MHz and approximate range of 1000m. The network should support both private data communications and public (mainly safety) communications but higher priority is given to public communications. Vehicular communications is usually developed as a part of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). ITS seeks to achieve safety and productivity through intelligent transportation which integrates communication between mobile and fixed nodes. To this end ITS heavily relies on wired and wireless communications.