Car-to-car communications

Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) is an important research and future application topic which experiences increasing attention from all major car manufacturers. This paper describes a Self-Organizing Traffic Information System (SOTIS) which is purely based on IVC and which does not need any expensive infrastructure. A SOTIS car is equipped with a satellite navigation receiver, a digital map and a communication unit. The new traffic information system based on SOTIS technology will give the driver many benefits even in situations where only a very small percentage of cars are equipped with the SOTIS technology.