ITS Radar International now monitoring ETSI Technical Committee for ITS
Date: 1/6/2009
Source: http://portal.etsi.org/, COMeSafety - Standardisation Activities Overview
Funding for ITS Radar International has recently been increased to enable the service to be enhanced. In the standards area, the ETSI standards working groups which are concerned with ITS will now be monitored in addition to the CEN and ISO groups.
ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, converged, broadcast and internet technologies. ETSI established the Technical Committee for ITS (ETSI TC ITS) in December 2007, with the primary function of developing the communication standards and protocols necessary for the deployment of co-operative infrastructure in Europe.
According to the COMeSafety Standardisation Overview, the two main current areas of focus in ETSI TC ITS are:
o “Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) - provide communications between vehicle and roadside infrastructure at specific locations (for example toll plazas). Applications such as Electronic Fee Collection (EFC) operate over DSRC.
o Wireless Communication Systems dedicated to Intelligent Transport Systems - provide network connectivity to vehicles and interconnect them. Using radio bands requires adequate harmonised standards which are under development for the 5 GHz and 63 GHz bands.”
The scope of work overlaps with other organisations, in particular ISO TC 204 WG 16 (CALM – Communications Architecture for Land Mobiles) and the American IntelliDrive initiative, formerly known as Vehicle-Infrastructure-Integration (VII). There are currently five published standards and 36 draft standards in TC ITS, across five working groups.
o Working Group 1 - User and Application Requirements
Current work includes defining a Basic Set of Applications (BSA), which can be reasonably deployed around 2012 – 2013. Once the functional and requirements and services are defined, conformance testing and interoperability testing procedures will be considered. In the future, an Enhanced Set of Applications (ESA) will be defined, taking into account techno-economical progress.
o Working Group 2 - Architecture, Cross Layer and Web Services
Working Group 2 has started to define a reference architecture. This is based on the input from the COMeSafety Architecture taskforce and various European co-operative projects. The latest thinking is presented in the diagram below. It has been recommended to use this diagram in the COMeSafety European ITS Architecture draft, because it attempts to reflect the best level of agreement across all those involved in Europe. This drawing has also been circulated to other international parties, including VII, CALM and C2C-CC (Car to Car Communication Consortium), with the purpose of suggesting a common architecture.
Currently there are 13 work items in Working Group 2. However, some of these items were inherited from ETSI ERM TG 37 (explained below) and are from 2006 or earlier. Therefore, they may not be taken any further.
o Working Group 3 - Transport and Network
The purpose of this working group is to develop standards for the data transport and network protocol layers and management of these layers, as described in the diagram above. In particular this includes:
o Development of a network layer which covers existing and future wireless and wired technologies
o Harmonisation of the network layer with the overall ITS system and architecture
o Integration of dedicated ITS network protocols and transport protocols with the Internet Ipv6 protocol suite
A more detailed description of the work can be found in the COMeSafety Standardisation document (see the link above).
o Working Group 4 - Media and Medium related
This working group focuses on the bottom layer described in the diagram, relating to different types of communication media used. It is planned to establish a close relationship with the working group Phy/Mac of the C2C-CC, with respect to all items relating to communication in the 5.9 GHz bands. Currently there are 12 work items, however some of them are from 2006 or earlier and might not be continued further.
o Working Group 5 – Security
The objectives of the Security working group are:
o “Assuring ITS solutions conform to regulatory requirements for privacy, data protection, lawful interception and data retention
o Management and co-ordination of the development of security specifications for ITS communication and data
o Investigation of security services and mechanisms required for providing ITS services over the Internet
o Development of security analyses of candidate protocols and network elements to be used within the ITS framework to implement capabilities
o Tracking ongoing world-wide security activities of interest to ITS”
The roadmap is yet to be constructed, but will be completed by the end of the year.
A second ETSI group is also monitored in the ITS Radar International Standards Spreadsheet, which is concerned with radio spectrum allocation and other matters. ETSI ERM is the committee for Electromagnetic compatibility and Radio spectrum Matters. ETSI ERM TG 37 is the ERM Task Group for Intelligent Transport Systems. ERM TG37 has a close relationship with TC ITS and provides and manages ETSI deliverables for radio-related ITS matters. The Task group also maintains ElectroMagnetic Compatibility (EMC) and radio spectrum matters in respect of DSRC standards.
In September 2008, the group adopted the standard, ETSI EN 302571, “Radio communications equipment operating in the 5855 MHz to 5925 MHz frequency band; Harmonised EN covering the essential requirements of article 3.2 of the R&TTE Directive”. This standard has reserved the ‘5 GHz band’ of 5855 to 5925 MHz for ITS applications. 30 MHz is reserved for safety ITS applications, 20 MHz for other applications and the remainder for future. This standard ensures that compliant ITS equipment avoids causing harmful interference.
The ITS Standards Spreadsheet is updated quarterly and the full list of published and draft standards in ETSI TC ITS and ETSI ERM TG 37 can be found under the ISO TC 204 and CEN TC 278 tables.
[Previous relevant ETSI TC ITS Articles: October 2008; November 2008]
ITS Radar International will continue to monitor developments in ETSI
