Inter-vehicle communication: technical issues on vehicle control application

Mutual exchange of status data between vehicles in close proximity is the basis for safe vehicle operation. Application areas range from driver assistance/warning to fully autonomous driving. To enable this data exchange we need an intervehicle communication (IVC) system. Vehicles involved in mutual data exchange form a kind of local area network; however, the characteristics of this network are quite different from those of conventional networks. The configuration of this kind of network changes from time to time, in terms of organization, proximity group, group position, and relative position; therefore, it is very challenging to establish. The authors have been working on this problem from the point of view of communication media and protocol. The characteristics and requirements of IVC are discussed, and several preliminary communication protocols are proposed. The authors also present some experimental results from the implementation of a function integrating communication by infrared ray with a gap-measuring technique by the vision system