Communications” (DSRC). (DSRC
has been used for electronic toll collection for over 10 years; this was essentially the first widespread vehicle-to-infrastructure application.)
In the U.S., signals for V2I and V2V
communications are carried over
75MHz of spectrum in the 5.9GHz band,
which was allocated for DSRC purposes
in 1999. China, Europe, and Japan have
also reserved DSRC bandwidth near this
range; Japan also uses spectrum in the
760MHz band, and Korea is reportedly
considering a move to this range.
However, regional standards for
DSRC and other aspects of V2V communication are not always compatible with each other, so it is unclear
whether cars designed for one regional
market would ever work in another.
There are efforts to harmonize them
somewhat: For example, Japan might
implement security according to IEEE
Standard 1609.2, currently being used
by the U.S. and the EU.
Public V2V tests began in 2006,
when DaimlerChrysler got a Mercedes-Benz and Dodge talking to each other,
and General Motors demonstrated
crash avoidance between two Cadillacs. The first consumer car with true
V2V communication capabilities, according to public announcements, will
be a 2017 Cadillac equipped with the
company’s “Super Cruise” technology.
Automakers have generally em-
braced V2X technology as a logical
piece of a larger assisted-driving
picture. Hideki Hada, general man-
ager of Integrated Vehicle Systems at
Toyota Motor Engineering & Manu-
facturing North America, described
how diverse sensor, V2I, and V2V
Despite V2V’s readiness and prom-
ised benefits, the public may resist
such mandates—especially in the U.S.
The NHTSA’s notice opened a 60-day
period for public comment, which
elicited nearly 1,000 responses, of
which 482 met the NHTSA’s submis-
sion policy. The consensus was over-
whelmingly negative, citing fears that
V2V technologies would lead to loss of
privacy, inattentive drivers, malicious
hackers, and health risks to those
claiming the widely discredited condi-
tion of “electromagnetic hypersensi-
tivity.” Further, some blanched at the
likely cost of about $300–$350 to build
V2V features into new cars, or retrofit
them into older ones.
Barua believes such opposition
pales in comparison to the human
costs that would come from blocking V2V technologies. “Studies have
shown that vehicle-to-vehicle communications could reduce traffic jams,
and a lot of lives could be saved,” he
says. “Even pedestrians would benefit—they could know when a vehicle
is coming, through vibrations on their
mobile phones. I think governments
should intervene, and take a lead for
V2V communications to be functional
as soon as possible.”
On the Road
The U.S. DOT report provides a thorough list of standards for that country,
including V2V message contents and
transmission performance requirements. The main set of architectural
and procedural standards is spelled
out in IEEE 1609, “Family of Standards
for Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE).” Of special interest
to those who fear malicious hackers
is IEEE 1609.2, “Security Services for
Applications and Management Messages,” which was finalized and published in April 2013.
A second set of standards, currently still in development, may be
found in SAE J2735 and SAE J2945.
These spell out what information
each message packet would carry; the
latter also includes a section on privacy and security. A third standard,
IEEE 802.11p, addresses physical
standard specifications for automo-tive-related “Dedicated Short Range
“For drivers,
I think it will be
very seamless;
they won’t know
whether it’s V2V,
V2I, or sensors that
provide guidance.
ACM
Member
News
LIFELONG LOVE OF MATH
SPURS TANNEN IN CS
Val Tannen,
professor of
Computer and
Information
Science in the
Engineering
School of the
University of Pennsylvania
(UPenn), has had a lifelong love
of mathematics. “There’s no
ambiguity about math. The
conclusions are inevitable if you
accept the assumptions,” he says.
Language and mathematical
logic are the dominant
influences on Tannen’s
research. He earned his
Computer Engineering degree
from the University Politehnica
of Bucharest; “There’s no
Romanian-equivalent master’s
degree; one degree covers both
bachelor’s and master’s,” he
explains. After graduation,
he worked as a programmer
for a local computer firm and
moonlighted as a researcher.
Fate intervened in 1982; Tannen
came to the U. S. to visit his
ailing father and wound up
seeking political asylum here.
He went to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where
he received his Ph.D. in Applied
Mathematics in 1987; a month
later, Tannen joined UPenn.
Tannen’s expertise spans
programming languages,
databases, parallel processing,
and logic in computer science
and its applications in life
sciences. “The word ‘language’
comes up all the time in my
research,” Tannen says. During
his 27 years at UPenn, he has
interwoven mathematical logic
and language into his career as a
computer scientist. Tannen also
specializes in data provenance,
a record of the origin and
transformation of data.
When he introduced a
course at UPenn called “Friendly
Logics,” Tannen recalls, the
title was approved only after
he authored the mathematical
definition: “A logic is said to
be friendly if and only if, it
strikes a good balance between
expressiveness and algorithmic
tractability.” That neatly sums
up Tannen’s career as well.
— Laura DiDio