THE FULLY NETWORKED CAR WORKSHOP – INNOVATION FOR GREENER MOTORING

The environment and climate change were major themes at the annual "Fully Networked Car" workshop that took place on 4–5 March 2009 at the Geneva International Motor Show. ITU organized this World Standards Cooperation (WSC) workshop with the help of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). These two organizations are ITU's partners in WSC. The event was sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Freescale Semiconductor and Telemobility.

Despite the current economic downturn, it is estimated that by 2020 the number of cars on the road will have nearly doubled to 1.5 billion. However, the expected impact of this growth on greenhouse-gas emissions can be reduced with the help of information and communication technologies (ICT). "We need to look at how ICT can help the motor industry address the challenge of climate change," said Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, upon opening the workshop. He outlined the work of the ITU Focus Group on ICT and Climate Change, set up in July 2008, and reported that good progress is being made towards a standardized methodology that will allow ICT companies to measure their carbon footprints. Mr Johnson encouraged an interactive discussion, especially to identify new areas of work for the WSC organizations on international standards. He pointed out that as a result of last year's event, ITU started new work on a vehicle gateway platform for telecommunication and intelligent transport services and applications. "This work takes place in an ITU Focus Group, which means that any interested party (you don't have to be an ITU member) can participate," Mr Johnson added.

Key objectives for the auto industry are to address climate change, security, safety, innovation and advanced communications, commented Kevin McKinley, Deputy Secretary-General of ISO. He stressed that "standards have an undeniable contribution to economic growth", and the challenge is for the world standards-development organizations to set priorities and coordinate their efforts.

Speaking of electric and hybrid cars, Jack Sheldon, IEC Standardization Strategy Manager, underlined that developing better batteries is essential, and new developments in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are promising. He added that the development of smart power grids will be vital to support the adoption of electric cars and IEC is working closely with ITU and ISO to provide seamless standards that will benefit governments, manufacturers and drivers.

An executive session of the workshop produced insights into how engineers around the world are developing technologies that will improve fuel economy, reduce emissions and lessen transport's environmental impact, all while delivering the comfort, convenience and performance that drivers demand.

Developments in Formula 1 racing cars can help introduce energy-efficient technologies on our roads, said Burkhard Göschel, CTO of the Vehicles and Powertrain Group at Magna International, Chairman of the Grand Prix Manufacturers Association and the Formula 1 Manufacturers Advisory Committee. Telemetry systems that are used in racing cars can also improve the safety of ordinary cars and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Mr Göschel added that 90 per cent of innovation will be in electronics and software and this will add a lot of complexity to a car. Thus, the number of electronic control units (ECU) in a car needs to be reduced, and better hardware and software integration is required.

The possibility of racing-car technology contributing to improvements in normal cars was also described by Gianluigi Ferri, CEO of Wireless & Monza Research Institute, speaking on behalf of former Formula 1 driver Ivan Capelli. He said that the famous Italian racing circuit at Monza launched a new event in 2008 called "Aria Nuova" that brings together engineers and businesses from the two fields. The second event will take place on 11–14 June 2009 with sessions on energy, climate change, and communications, and will finish with a competition for environmentally-friendly vehicles.

A special feature of the workshop was the "Lightning GT" prototype electric sports car, presented by Chris Dell, Managing Director, Lightning Car Company, United Kingdom. It uses the latest engine and battery technology, can accelerate from 0 to nearly 97 km/h in less than five seconds, and has a top speed of more than 209 km/h. It can be charged in 10 minutes.

T. Russell Shields, Chairman of Ygomi, said that vehicle communication technologies could help to make electric vehicles more attractive to consumers, by addressing such issues as the limited driving range of such vehicles, time and cost of recharging them, sparse recharging infrastructure and high battery costs. He said that all the technology needed for these solutions already exists, and the in-vehicle technology has been tested extensively. The remaining steps are for governments to allocate the radio bandwidth for data transmission, and for operators to build the necessary networks, Mr Shields explained.

Better Place, a firm based in California, United States, promotes the adoption of electric vehicles and deployment of supporting infrastructure, and is working with Renault-Nissan on making these vehicles. Better Place Vice President (International Standardization) Ziva Patir outlined the benefits of electric cars, but emphasized how "standards can either create a project or kill it". A comprehensive approach is needed by major standards-development organizations such as ITU, ISO and IEC, she said.

Another area of focus was intelligent transport systems (ITS) that are used to improve traffic flow and road safety, increase the efficiency of freight and public transport and cut fuel consumption — thereby reducing the environmental impact.

Tadao Saito, Chief Technology Officer at Toyota InfoTechnology Center, underlined the key role played by ITS in traffic management (see Figure 1). "ICT can lead to safer and greener transport," he said, but global standards for platforms and applications are necessary to achieve this. Computers and communication terminals are likely to be ubiquitous in cars by 2030, Mr Saito predicted, but there are barriers to be overcome, such as finding sufficient radio-frequency spectrum.

Figure 1 — ITS as a new market for telecommunication in ubiquitous ICT

Source: Taido Saito, Toyota InfoTechnology Center.

Hermann Meyer, CEO of ERTICO ITS Europe, explained that his organization is a public-private partnership that promotes the development and deployment of ITS across Europe. It is working to promote "intelligent mobility", involving cars, people and goods, he said. The vision behind the project is to achieve zero road accidents, zero traffic delays and a reduced impact on the environment. Mr Meyer gave examples of the ITS services shown in Figure 2, noting how it can lessen traffic jams, improve accessibility, enhance safety and lead to emission reductions.

Figure 2 — Ubiquitous connectivity will improve urban mobility

Source: Hermann Meyer, ERTICO (ITS Europe).

Denis Griot, Senior Vice President and Chairman of Freescale Semiconductor Inc (Europe, Middle East and Africa), emphasized that networked cars and the full implementation of ITS are critical in addressing climate change, as part of the European Union's overall goal of reducing CO₂ emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. Also from Freescale, Marc Osajda talked about the "automotive megatrends" illustrated in Figure 3. Cars are gaining more embedded computing power, with reduced power consumption, he said. Mr Osajda also noted that, by standardizing the many protocols in this field, ITU could facilitate the deployment of ITS.

Figure 3 — Outstanding innovation in automotive networking

Source: Marc Osajda, Freescale, Semiconductor, Inc.

Adam Brzozowski of Avanti Communications, described the SISTER project that promotes the integration of satellite and terrestrial communications in ITS. Satellite broadcasts can provide information to drivers, while two-way satellite communications can be used for ITS services that need wide coverage (for example fleet management), or high reliability, such as emergency response. Mr Brzozowski said that the first S-band satellite for Europe will be available in 2009 and will offer, for example, direct broadcasts to the vehicle of television and radio, map updates and location-based services.

Efficient parking can have a positive effect on climate change, according to Bruno Verplancken of Neopark, because it leads to less driving around, and so a cut in greenhouse-gas emissions. Neopark is a French service that helps drivers find places to park. During the workshop, Cyril Zeller, Business Development Director at Mobile Devices, demonstrated a platform developed for Neopark. Mobile Devices is a French company that provides technology for telematics (navigation, driver information and fleet management).

New technologies are bringing greater comfort and entertainment to cars. Software-defined radio, for example, was described by Asier Alonso Muñoz of TECNALIA-TELE, while a new initiative called ".car" was outlined by Arnaud de Meulemeester, Managing Director of ATX Europe. The company advocates the creation of a top-level domain ".car". Mr de Meulemeester explained that "while the primary focus is to give motorists the ability to surf the web in their vehicles, there are other key issues". These include ensuring flexibility of the interface for the lifetime of the vehicle, and customization according to vehicle model and country.

Continuing growth in traffic makes it vital to use ICT and telematics to improve safety and support all road users, while at the same time enhancing the entertainment and information that people can access in a car, said Herbert Scheitler of Wavecom. But he noted that the interests of various stakeholders have to be aligned and critical business issues resolved in order to introduce the systems successfully in the market.

The workshop also examined how wireless access networks can be used in cars, as well as increasingly sophisticated mobile devices, such as smartphones. Jean-Marie Bonnin, Institut TELECOM and TELECOM Bretagne, highlighted the advantages of using Internet protocol (IP) networks. Because many billions of cars are expected by 2050, migration to IPv6 will be essential to provide enough addresses for using IP networks. Mr Bonnin described the CALM (Communication Access for Land Mobiles) system, which uses multiple access networks to provide continuous communications for vehicles. But gaps in standards are hindering the deployment of such systems, he said.

FlexRay, a communications protocol for vehicle networks developed by a consortium founded in 2000, was described by Rainer Makowitz, Freescale Semiconductor, who said its Version 3.0 is due to be launched in 2009. He commented that the number of nodes has increased with each generation of FlexRay, and Version 3.0 should be more energy efficient.

Yunpeng Zang of Aachen University, Germany, described a project to improve vehicle communications. There are two different approaches, he said: car-to-car and cellular communications. He proposed a hybrid of the two, so as to gain the benefits of both technologies. A "multihop" solution was described by Wai Chen, of Telcordia Technologies and Toyota InfoTechnology Center, who spoke about his research on improving road safety and reducing traffic congestion. To overcome problems of signal shadowing and limited range, a network of nearby vehicles can be created through Local Peer Group Communication (LPG).

The complexity of modern vehicles includes different types of network and device, as well as multiple access points. This increases the threats to confidentiality, integrity and availability of data sent to and from cars, with serious consequences, explained Michael Müter, Daimler AG. For example, tampering with functions such as braking could greatly affect safety. Mr Müter said that both proactive and reactive security functions are needed, such as digital signatures and detection of intrusions. As vehicle architecture changes to a more open and exposed system, new threats to security and safety may emerge.

The deployment of secure vehicular communication systems was the topic of a presentation by Panos Papadimitratos, Senior Researcher, EPFL, SeVeCom. He described progress in the SeVeCom research project, which is reaching conclusion this spring. Elements of a secure vehicle include a unique identity and the same level of privacy for car communications as for other modes. Meanwhile, TeMa.Mobility Consortium is focusing on ways to connect all drivers to the single European emergency phone number, 112, according to Francesco Di Corpo, its representative at the workshop. The single number comes into effect in 2010.

In ITU, Study Group 16 of the Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU–T) is working on vehicle gateway platform (VGP) and system coordination for improving speech quality in car communications. Yushi Naito, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, and Chairman of Study Group 16, described plans (including target dates for recommendations) for study of the new Question 27 on VGP for telecommunication and ITS services and applications, as well as Question 18 on interaction aspects of signal processing network equipment.

Progress has been made in the audio field in recent years, notably in the Focus Group FITCAR, whose work led to a new ITU standard for hands-free terminals in narrowband speech communication. In 2008, the new group on vehicle communications, ITU Focus Group CarCom, began studying wideband speech. Highlighting these developments, Jean-Yves Monfort, Senior Standardization Manager at France Telecom and Vice-Chairman of ITU–T FG CarCom, said the time is right for wideband, which offers good quality for in-car communication.

This view was echoed by Hans Gierlich, HEAD Acoustics GmbH, who chairs the CarCom Focus Group. He explained that the goal of wideband in cars is to improve overall sound and communication quality. As well as making it more pleasant to listen to music, this increases the intelligibility of speech and so lessens driver distractions. Mr Gierlich said the Focus Group is developing a standard for testing and optimization of the communication quality of a range of services and devices. It expects to finish its work by autumn 2009.

Scott Pennock of QNX Software Systems (Wavemakers) Inc underlined that although deployment of wideband (50–7000Hz) has already started, a long transition period can be expected while hybrid wideband/narrowband connections persist. Meanwhile, vehicle platforms for wideband will require good electro-acoustic design, as well as high-performance acoustic echo cancellation and noise reduction algorithms.

Jean-Pierre Jallet, NXP Semiconductors pointed out that cars can be a very noisy environment. Currently, noise is reduced by such passive countermeasures as damping material, which can lead to heavier cars. This is important, as energy concerns require moves to lighter vehicles. However, active noise cancellation (ANC) reduces the noise perceived by passengers by superimposing the same noise signal but in anti-phase. ANC can also be beneficial for listening to music in cars and for hands-free communication.

Speech communication in a car is often difficult because of interference with the signal, explained Tim Haulick, Harman/Becker Automotive Systems GmbH. This problem affects the uplink and downlink signal in a hands-free phone call, as well as communication between passengers in the vehicle itself. For this reason efficient speech enhancement technologies are required to ensure reasonable speech quality, Mr Haulick said.

Innovative strategies are being used to improve the delivery of telematic voice services that give information to drivers, said Julien Masson, Director French Operations, Connexis LLC. A compromise is needed between embedded voice recognition systems (which are expensive, have high computing demands and do not fully accommodate natural language), and assistance from a live operator (which means running expensive call centres). Mr Masson said the Connexis innovation is a "People-Assisted Computer System" (PACS) which cuts the cost of traditional call centres. It processes a customer's voice using a hybrid of server-based speech recognition, with people standing by to assist if something is unclear.