Tecniche, algoritmi e protocolli di comunicazione per ITS

Due to the changing environmental conditions, the demographic trend and the consequent increase of mobility demand, breakthrough innovations are required in order to respond to the needs for increasingly safe, efficient and sustainable transport systems. Pervasive digital technologies and wireless communications represent of course the main drivers and enablers of the deep change process for all transportation modes. They will be the basis for development of ITSs (Intelligent Transportation Systems) in all transportation contexts, whose goal is to improve safety, efficiency and reduce CO 2 emissions through the currently available ICT (Information and Communications Technology) technologies and the emerging ones. Significant challenges remain to fully match these aims. In this thesis, the contribution is focused on the study techniques, algorithms and communication protocols for ITS, that encompass air, road, and rail transport. Specifically, after the assessment of the specific problems of freight rail transportation field, smart solutions for continuous monitoring and management of freight trains have been investigated. In particular, a heterogeneous wireless platform has been proposed and validated through the use of low cost devices and platform. The proposed solution aims to detect and notify a failure or anomaly in order to improve the running train safety and track the wagons for logistical purposes. These activities have been developed within an industry-driven project, mainly focused on plug-and-play solutions for continuous monitoring of freight trains. Concerning the air transportation domain, several issues related to the ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) surveillance system for air traffic control have been addressed. More specifically, performance analyses have been carried out on different ADS-B receiver architectures, based on enhanced reception algorithms proposed by the RTCA (Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics) and two different RF reception chains, realized according to specification of logarithmic and linear amplification. This investigation has been carried out by using a ad-hoc developed simulation environment able to model the entire ADS-B transceiver chain, from the signals’ generation to the error detection and correction in the reception phase. Based on the results obtained from performance analysis, a VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) description of the best performing solution, has been developed in view of a system FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) implementation. Regarding of the automotive context, an in-depth study has been carried out on technologies and standard for vehicular communications, with particular focus on the American (IEEE WAVE) and the European (ETSI ITS G5) one, as well as the latest standards released by 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) about the cellular systems evolution (LTE-V/5G) to support V2X (Vehicle-to-everything) services. Different use cases have been implemented through a high-fidelity simulation environment to test the usefulness of V2X communication in road traffic management processes. Furthermore, we have been exploited the use of vehicular communication to estimate traffic flow at an intersection, in order to optimized the signalling scheme of traffic lights. In addition, a channel occupancy evaluations have been carried out in order to further validate the proposed approach. An integrated architecture will be presented, as part of activities of the EMERGE project proposal, for efficient management of smart commercial vehicles, equipped with on-board multi-platform and multi-standard technologies for localization and communication (from V2X 802.11p-based to the 5G). In addition, this work deepens the security requirements for connected vehicles and the available solutions to allow a secure dissemination of messages in vehicular network.