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SafeTRIP

The SafeTRIP project is an FP7 EU-funded project, which gathers 20 partners from 7 European countries.

The Concept:

The SafeTRIP project aims to develop an open platform and demonstrate its benefits through a number of complete end-to-end ready-to-deploy services – improving road safety, mobility and environment protection for passenger vehicles. The proposed services are primarily targeted to address the needs of EU citizens travelling by road - i.e. drivers and passengers of cars and coaches.

The main outcome of the project is an open platform using the S-band technology as the foundation of its communication infrastructure, exploiting the potential of this new spectrum resource to provide low cost channel for broadcasting data to millions of vehicles and managing short messages transmitted from those vehicles. The communication infrastructure will also provide bidirectional channel supporting “traditional” services based on voice and VPN access. An accurate satellite positioning (GPS / EGNOS / CALILEO) is also integrated in this open platform.

The SafeTRIP platform is composed of onboard items aggregated into an On-Board Unit (OBU), central items (Hub, Network Control Centre) and distributed items (Service Enabling Platform). A smart middleware, software running both onboard and centrally, provides an abstraction layer to the services, making the SafeTRIP platform:

• capable of integrating alternative communication technologies such as 3G and others.
• really open to the integration of third party services.

The open SafeTRIP platform is designed to host services that primarily improve safety and provide assistance for navigation. It is however capable to host entertainment and advertising services too. During the project, a number of such services will be implemented and demonstrated. By design, the platform is open and flexible – capable of using alternative communication technologies (such as 3G, 4G) and integrates with existing and new ITS services.

The Communication Infrastructure:

The SafeTRIP system uses both satellite communications and alternative ground networks in a fully interoperable and integrated approach. This combination has a number of unique features that, together with the intrinsic safety and security characteristics of the satellite-based approach, make it the most suitable telecommunication technology for transport systems.

The SafeTRIP communication infrastructure aims at providing three kinds of services:

• Broadcast services exploit the global coverage provided by satellite communication to deliver the same data to all the users. The DVB-SH standard has been adopted for these services, with some modifications (DVB-SH-LL) for the provision of real-time contents with low-latency.
• Bidirectional messaging services provide interactivity between the vehicles/terminals and the system (similar to SMS). They are based on S-MIM / S-band Mobile Interactive Multimedia (ETSI TS 102 721) standard that has been especially designed for satellite communications requiring little power on the user equipment side.
• Bidirectional connection-oriented services support voice and video communications. In this case, quasi-synchronous CDMA technologies are used, ensuring adequate capacity and dynamic resource allocation.

The SafeTRIP Middleware:

The unique concept of SafeTRIP is about an On-Board Unit integrated with a smart middleware harmonizing the communication channels that have different interface and behavior. The Service Enabling Platform is thus software that allows the services to be independent of the type of the communication channel between the OBUs and the service centers.

The SafeTRIP Applications:

Several safety-oriented applications will be demonstrated during the project, including:

• Emergency call system
• Vehicle surveillance
• Monitoring of hazardous and dangerous goods vehicles
• Bus travel tracking and monitoring
• Optimized navigation, real-time traffic information and warnings
• Reporting of incidents / accidents for successive incidents prevention

Furthermore a wide range of additional services will be offered to the passengers of the vehicles, through the DVB-SH technology, that will make their trip more convenient and comfortable:

• Digital radio
• Mobile TV
• Music and Video on demand

The Partners:

Sanef (France)
Eutelsat (France)
Indra (Spain)
Fraunhofer iis (Germany)
PIAP (Poland)
University College London (UK)
Abertis Autopistas (Spain)
Acesa (Spain)
University of Budapest (Hungary)
Fondazione Ugo Bordoni (Italy)
Inter Mutuelles Assistance (France)