Cooperative communications between vehicles and intelligent road signs

CAPTIV is a research program proposing new low-cost and energy-efficient mobile communications solutions to ease and make safer road traffic conditions. Considering ¿intelligent¿ road signs and vehicles, i.e. equipped with an autonomous radio communication system, drivers will be able to receive at any time various information about traffic fluidity or road sign identification. In order to reduce deployment cost and increase lifetime of the whole system, Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) signal processing techniques are used. Considering each crossroads as a communication node, the possible cooperation between road signs allows energy-efficient communications between crossroads. MIMO channels characterization and modeling, specific antennas conception, associated with signal processing techniques allow to further optimize the energy consumption between nodes. A driving simulator is used in order to both validate the communication system and protocols between vehicles and road signs and evaluate the effect of the additional information on the driver behavior. Supported by the Brittany Regional Council, CAPTIV is a highly applicative program. A first prototype of such a communicating crossroads will be presented in the Vehipole in Saint-Brieuc (technological site devoted to ITS experimentations).