**2.1 Vehicle component**

448 Wireless Communications and Networks – Recent Advances

The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. In the next section, the architecture of co-operative systems is described. In the following wireless technologies used within the cooperative systems framework are outlined. The applications of vehicular networks and their corresponding categories are highlighted. Emphasis is given on hot research topics concerning co-operative systems such as data fusion, routing, security and privacy.

In co-operative systems the specification of a unified communication architecture plays a central role for further deployment. As a result of the deployment of co-operative systems the road users will benefit from improved safety, reduced traffic congestion, environmental friendly driving and much more. The key to achieving these benefits lies in the specification of a common and standardized communication architecture among the various components of such systems. This architecture comprises four main components which can be composed arbitrarily to form a co-operative intelligent transport system. To form such a system there is no need to have all these four components available but a subset of them is sufficient. The components can communicate with each other either directly within the same communication network or indirectly across several communication networks. These four components are depicted in Figure 2 and are briefly described in the following. For a more

detailed description one can refer to (Bechler et al., 2010; ETSI, 2010).

Fig. 1. Indicative ITS applications (ETSI, 2011).

Eventually, conclusions are drawn.

**2. Architecture** 

The vehicle is equipped with communication capabilities (i.e. a router, embedded PCs) to establish communication with other vehicles and the roadside infrastructure. These modules have access to the CAN network of the vehicle as well as to other vehicle data which they collect, process and communicate to other vehicles, the roadside units or the central system. The exact HW solution is not strictly defined and it can be a unique HW unit or several units which form a LAN inside the vehicle.
