Project CIDER (Communications Infrastructure for DRIVE on European Roads) has been examining all the methods of providing the communications links to vehicles within the planned Integrated Road Transport Environment. A major activity has been to study the potential of mobile radio systems. The value of virtually continuous two way communication offered by mobile radio systems is self evident, as demonstrated by SOCRATES (the largest DRIVE project) which is basing all its vehicle communication links on cellular radio. The first pan-European mobile system to support DRIVE applications will be the digital cellular radio system, GSM. However, GSM will not be the only pan- European system capable of supporting DRIVE applications. This paper looks beyond the introduction of GSM, and describes two further pan-European mobile systems in the context of DRIVE. These are the 'Digital Trunked Mobile Radio System' and the 'Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service'.
Abstract