Project Information Status: Finished  

 
  Wireless Traffic Service Platform for Linking Cars  
   
Project Key Data Project Consortium
Project ID: CP3-005 ETRA I+D, Spain
Start date: Q3/2006 ACL, Luxembourg
End date: Q4/2008 CRP Henri Tudor, Luxembourg
Total budget: 4.0 MEuro Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland
Total effort: 51 PY Mobisoft, Finland
    Moviquity SA, Spain
Coordinator: Manuel Serrano Matoses, ETRA I+D, Spain Sunit Oy, Finland
    e-mail: mserrano.etra-id@grupoetra.com Synergiums, Luxembourg
      University of Malaga, Spain
      VTT Electronics, Finland
  Helsingin Sanomat, 15.11.2008 the biggest Finnish Newspaper has published a two page publication about intelligent roads and the Celtic Carlink project.  On the 1st page of this file there is a generic article on "Intelligence is coming to the crossroads". On the 2nd page, the rest of the above mentioned article is visible, and there is a new article "State of the roads information to a driver within seconds". This is about Carlink.
View articles as pdf  
     
Focus
  • Intelligent wireless traffic service platform between cars via WLAN and WiMAX transceivers beside the road(s).
  • Provide real-time local weather data, urban transport traffic management, information broadcasting/sharing.
  • Integrate also accident warnings and traffic intensity information for route planning
Main Results
  • Wireless traffic service platform
  • Real-time local weather data application specialized for traffic
  • Urban transport traffic management application
  • Urban information broadcasting/sharing application
  • Fast connectivity and routing schemes for ad hoc networking
Abstract
The aim of this project is to develop an intelligent wireless traffic service platform between cars supported with WLAN transceivers beside the road(s). In this perspective also the WiMAX network is analyzed. The primary applications are real-time local weather data, the urban transport traffic management, and the urban information broadcasting.

The operational model is as follows. Cars have integrated WLAN transceivers to communicate with base stations located beside the road (cars may also communicate between each other as members of ad-hoc network). WLAN base stations provide real-time local weather information and forecast, transport traffic management information and urban information broadcasting to the private cars and public transportation. Cars gather real-time data (weather,traffic etc.) about the road they pass, and deliver this information back to base stations. At the same time, base stations provide all the information gathered to the central unit containing, among other things, learning weather model and traffic management central unit. Central unit use the received data to update its databases (weather, traffic etc.).Up-to-date information is feedforwarded back to cars. Base station produces accurate but geographically sparse data measurements (weather, traffic, etc.) to be integrated with (partially redundant) car measurements. This information is also delivered to the weather model, and used to sharpen the weather and traffic information and forecast. Furthermore, the local road weather data and real traffic information is downloaded to the car computer, which warns the driver if for example the road may be icy ahead.

At the beginning the weather model only has the weather data from the meteorological measurements, and therefore local weather info is not accurate everywhere. The real time local data from cars (with correction based on reference data by base stations) is used as a training data to build local weather information and forecast more accurate and localized. Similarly the traffic management information will be updated and sharpened by the central unit, based on the information received from traffic.

Additional applications could be for example improved large-scale weather forecasts, the real-time accident warning, intelligent real-time route planning and “WLAN CB radio” using VoIP.