Interoperability of technologies and communication is at the heart of PoDIUM, enabling advanced Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility (CCAM) solutions. To achieve this goal, adherence to common standards is key. Meet our partner FSCOM who is leading PoDIUM’s work regarding standardisation and regulation activities to learn more about this important aspect of our project.
FSCOM is an SME located in the technology park of Sophia Antipolis. FSCOM’s vision is to ensure that the Industry uses international standards and applies robust testing methodologies to validate their product and services and thus optimise their development process. As member of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), FSCOM is actively contributing to the Telecommunications standardisation building up on its experience of validating Telecommunications network and devices for the industry. FSCOM participates in the ETSI’s Specialised Task Forces (STF) for the development of Technical Specifications, especially in the context of test specifications (test purposes and descriptions, abstract test cases in TTCN-3, validation) for various connectivity technologies.
The role of standards in PoDIUM
PoDIUM aims to deploy new innovative use cases of CCAM based on advanced Physical and Digital Infrastructure (PDI) technologies and combined cellular and ITS V2X communication. The project’s use cases involve multiple components, which need to interoperate seamlessly. For their successful demonstration, the use cases rely on the interoperability of the communication procedures and the data set exchanged between the components. Beyond ensuring interoperability, standards are also relevant for safe and cybersecure operations in all use cases.
Standards are technical specifications providing a shared and commonly agreed foundation for communication procedures and dataset formats applied in the V2X and CCAM environments, which are essential to achieve interoperability
PoDIUM’s standardisation activities focus on two main objectives: ensuring that the use case complies with the relevant standards and exchanging experience about the use of standards in the use case with other projects and relevant stakeholders. In addition, PoDIUM aims to promote the benefit of the standards, as shown by the successful interoperability in the use case demonstrations.
Overall, PoDIUM’s experience with interoperability, based on the public standards can be considered as a validation of the suitability of the technical specification. Use cases are operated in real conditions, which can show possible limitation in the technical specification or, in the worse cases, possible discrepancies. The successful implementation of standards is de facto verified in the realistic environment of the project’s use cases and validated in the use case demonstration activities.
Insights into PoDIUM’s standardisation activities
Based on the compliancy experience in PoDIUM, contacts have been established with the ETSI Technical Committee for Intelligent Transport Systems (TC ITS) to further analyse the situation related to the implementation of V2X Common Data Dictionary (CDD) Standard, where possible adjustment could be necessary and might require a change the CDD standard. ETSI is the Europeans Telecommunications Standard Institute. The ETSI Intelligent Transport Systems Committee develop and publishes a series of ITS Standards, being Technical Specifications to define procedures and data modles for V2X functions. CDD is a base data model specification for V2X messages eccahnged between Vehicles and other Actors.
Multiple PoDIUM partners, such as Bosch, FSCOM, LINKS, and NOKIA, are active participants in the ETSI ITS technical committee to develop V2X technical specifications as well as 3GPP developing specifications for 5G, applied to V2X scenarios and also the ETSI MEC ISG Industry Specification Group, for developing Multi-access Edge Computing specification for handling different use case data at the edge of mobile network (i.e. as close as possible to the 5G antennas for instance).
The PoDIUM use case apply a wide range of standards from diverse organisations. Many of them are applied implicitly by the use of compliant components. Some of the key standards include:
| Standard Development Organisation (SDO) | Technical Committee (TC) | Id | Name of the standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| ETSI | ITS | EN 302 637-2 | CAM – Specification of Cooperative Awareness Basic Service |
| ETSI | ITS | TS 103 561 | Manoeuvre coordination services |
| ETSI | ITS | EN 302 637-3 | DENM – Specifications of Decentralized Environmental Notification Basic Service |
| ETSI | ITS | EN 302 663 | ITS G5 access layer specification |
| ETSI | ITS | TR 102 638 | Basic set of applications – definitions |
| ISO | TC 204 | TS 19321 | IVIM (Infrastructure to Vehicle Message) |
| ETSI | ITS | TR 103 562 | CPM – Collective Perception Services |
| IETF | RFC 9293 | TCP | |
| IETF | RFC 791 | IPV4 | |
| IETF | RFC 8200 | IPV6 | |
| IETF | RFC 768 | UDP | |
| 3GPP | SA1 | TR 22.885 | Study on LTE support for V2X services |
| 3GPP | SA1 | TR 22.886 | Study on enhancement of 3GPP Support for 5G V2X Services |
| 3GPP | SA1 | TS 22.185 | Service requirement for V2X services |
| 3GPP | SA1 | TS 22.186 | Service requirement for enhanced V2X scenarios |
| ETSI | ITS | TS 102 894-2 | CDD – Common Data Dictionary |
| ETSI | ITS | TS 103 324 | CPS – Cooperative Perception Services |
FSCOM and PoDIUM
FSCOM is also involved in other key areas of PoDIUM. Beyond leading the task on standardisation, EU policies and regulations, FSCOM is also participating in the liaison activities and international cooperation task, especially by building up on the standardisation eco-system to create liaisons with other projects and related partnership associations, especially the CCAM Partnership. The growing importance of cybersecurity and AI trustworthiness matters in CCAM will also be topics to organise cross pro-project and multi-stakeholder events to explore further.
FSCOM’s experience and key achievement lies in standardisation, with active participation to the ETSI Specialist Task Forces to increase interoperability efficiency with the development of formal test specification for ETSI TC ITS standards. FSCOM also contributes with technical support to the organisation and demonstrations of the ETSI Plugtests event in the V2X arena. With PoDIUM, use case deployment and demonstration shows the benefit of the 2X standards for CCAM advanced use cases.