On the impact of real time data acquisition from vehicles through UMTS

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) make use of wireless communication technologies to provide traffic efficiency and road safety without altering the existing road infrastructure. To really impact on traffic management, ITS should act in real-time, requiring updated traffic information; hence, the collection of small amounts of information frequently transmitted from a high number of vehicles is needed. Cellular systems represent the most suitable technological solution to achieve this service, since they do not require any further installation of network infrastructures. However, they were designed for different applications: voice, web browsing or e-mailing. In this paper we aim at discussing the feasibility of frequent acquisition of small amount of data from vehicles through the universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS), and at investigating its impact on the services already provided by the network. Numerical results are obtained by means of simulations, paying particular attention to realistic scenarios, both in terms of wireless systems and users mobility.