Dedicated Short-Range Communication is a technology that has its roots ten years back. The term was introduced in Europe to describe the new CEN TC278 standardization work at 5.8 GHz. The term "dedicated" means that it was developed for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) purposes. Short-Range is more open for interpretation, but CEN DSRC systems can have a typical range from less than one to more than forty meters. There are other regional and national DSRC standards, but CEN DSRC is the most widely accepted in terms of countries and number of units deployed. Inside the European ITS industry there are on-going debates surrounding the next phase of DSRC, particularly inside European standardization. This paper will review the current status of DSRC in Europe in the context of these debates and argue that CEN DSRC is already a powerful tool for the ITS market. Some in the industry would like to weaken this strength and impose a poorer, sometimes more costly version on operators and the end users. Such action has no technical, economical or practical logic behind it as this paper will demonstrate.
Abstract