Abstract—Traffic and Travel Information (TTI) systems in
use today are based on a centralized structure. Sensors along
the roadside monitor traffic density and transmit the results to
a central unit where a situation analysis of the global traffic
scenario is performed. The resulting traffic information is made
available to the drivers via broadcast service or alternatively on
demand via cellular phone.
Within the FleetNet1 project, a completely different proposal
to establish a powerful traffic information system is developed
and analyzed, which is based on Inter-Vehicle Communication
(IVC). All vehicles are part of a Self-Organizing Traffic Information
System (SOTIS): Each vehicle monitors the locally
observed traffic situation by recurrently receiving data packets
with detailed information from other vehicles. A traffic situation
analysis is performed in each individual vehicle and the result is
transferred via wireless data-link to all surrounding vehicles in
the local neighborhood. No sensors along the highways, no central
units and no broadcast stations or cellular networks are needed,
which minimizes infrastructure costs. The complete system can
be easily deployed and service charges for the end user can be
avoided completely.
Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SOTIS
technique can easily provide detailed information for each vehicle
with an individual information range of more than 50 km from
the current position with high accuracy and low delay. Even in
situations where only a small fraction of all vehicles (e.g. 2%) is
equipped with the SOTIS technology, the full functionality of a
traffic information system is available