Vehicular Networking Road Weather Information System Tailored for Arctic Winter Conditions

Winter conditions are dominating the road traffic platform in the Northern Scandinavia, and the weather services play an important role in successful winter road traffic operations. Intelligent Road project is contributing towards tackling this challenge and aims to support the development of business community in Northern Scandinavian region by road safety provision via vehicular networking based services in Nordic weather conditions. FMI’s combined Road Weather Station (RWS)/Road Side Unit (RSU) is acting as a central infrastructural element of such vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication platform, supported with areal infrastructure and third party vehicles equipped with weather measurement and communication infrastructure. The aim is to employ road weather systems of FMI and furthermore exploit RWS data as well as the data gathered from vehicle instrumentation. The resulting up-todate and localized weather data is then delivered to the stakeholders, tourists and even the vehicles in the operating area in real-time. IEEE 802.11p based vehicular networking is the primary communication channel, supported with traditional Wi-Fi and 3G communications.