Evaluation of a General Purpose Communication Unit for Two-Wheelers

Resumen

Vehicular communications are a need in future smartscenarios, since people can spend hours on a variety of transportmeans in daily activities. However, most of the current researchdeals with the integration of telematics in light vehicles, while twowheelers (or equivalent) present especial conditions that reveal aneed for new communication units that allow integrating bikesand mopeds (among others) into vehicular networks. In thispaper, this gap is solved with a new embedded design providedwith IEEE 802.11p and cellular communications, which can workas a mobile router and presents a simple but effective interfacefor warning services. A key point of the proposal is the bet forIPv6 as the base network protocol, which will be the essentialin all-connected environments following the IoT paradigm. Thecommunication unit has been tested in a real driving scenario, andone-hop results using the 802.11p channel reveal communicationdelays bellow 2 ms, packet delivery rates above 50% within aroad stretch of 400 meters, and a maximum throughput of 4Mbps. These performance values are adequate for a number ofsafety, infotainment and exploitation services.