COMeSafety  / Approach  / 

Approach

When COMeSafety started in 2006, many European projects and activities were planned or already on their way dealing with different aspects of Car2X communication and cooperative systems. A European wide process was missing to consolidate the results und to support the projects to introduce these results into the European and world wide standardisation process.   Therefore a new consolidation process shown in figure 1 is one of the main guiding principles of COMeSafety. The basic idea was to collect the requirements of the projects under consideration. These requirements needed to be consolidated. The results of the consolidation would provide a basis for the European and world-wide standardisation and the frequency allocation process.

Figure 1: Aim of COMeSafety: New Consolidation Process

COMeSafety is chairing an architecture task force that is both collecting and consolidating the requirements and defining an architectural framework. The three currently running big integrated projects dealing with cooperative systems, CVIS, COOPERS and SAFESPOT are all actively participating in this work. Furthermore, members of these projects are also active in the C2C Communication Consortium, which provides industry-wide platforms to harmonize the technical details and forward them to European standardisation in ETSI.

Figure 2 shows the connection between projects and standardisation. The process is a sequence of collaboration, consolidation and harmonisation into standardisation, which is fostered by the support of COMeSafety (see figure 3).

Figure 2: New Process: Actors and Tasks
Figure 3: COMeSafety Process for Collaboration, Consolidation, Harmonisation and Standardisation

A key problem is finding the way of getting the best progress. For solving that problem a so called group of experts is established to coordinate all activities in a qualified way. Triggered by COMSafety activities the main tasks of the group of experts are amongst others

  • the dialogue to the C2C Communication Consortium,
  • the contact to the European and world wide standardisation bodies and
  • the compensation of specifications and requirements between the involved European projects.

The group of experts can be seen as an information exchange and control centre between the involved European projects and standardisation bodies and the one side and the COMeSafety and C2C Communication Consortium on the other side. Figure 4 illustrates the role of the group of experts.

Figure 4: Role of the Group of Experts

COMeSafety itself has named so-called liaison managers for the 5 working groups in ETSI as well as for ISO CALM and IEEE 802.11p, 1609.2 and 1609.4. Figure 5 shows the assignment of the COMeSafety liaison managers. A guideline has been developed to define the work of the liaison managers.

Figure 5: Liaison Managers of COMeSafety

In doing so, the process of consolidation and standardisation has been set up and is constantly improved. Everybody can sense it in the European frequency allocation process which so far has led to CEPT decision and recommendation and the collaboration for a common architecture blueprint, which is going to be published in 2008.