STANDARDS: CEN Blitzkreig thwarted by Pacific allies

A German-led effort to run roughshod over International Standards Organization (ISO) rules and to impose the European CEN standards for dedicated short range communications (DSRC) on the rest of the world was thwarted recently following strong North American-Japanese resistance. The confrontation occurred Oct 16, 17 at meetings of the group known as TC-204 held at the offices of the German standards agency DIN in Berlin and at a nearby hotel, before the recent ITS World Congress. Back in 1995 it had been agreed that the Europeans through CEN would “take the leadership role” in working for consensus over harmonization of DSRC standards worldwide via the ISO process. The Europeans would select a convenor for the ISO efforts in DSRC, but it was understood that these efforts would be an open consensus-building process in which all had an opportunity to comment and in which an effort was made to accomodate different needs. They say ISO rules lay out the process.

However Dr Carl-Herbert Rokitansky of the Aaachen University of Technology, the head of the European CEN DSRC group and designated convenor of the key ISO TC-204 formally proposed at the ISO meeting Oct 16 that the CEN standard be adopted as the world standard. He insisted a Vienna agreement on ITS standardization meant that the CEN-278 standard recently approved by European Community ballot must be adopted without further substantive amendment as an ISO or world standard. As convenor of the ISO working group (that leadership role”) Rokitansky said that only non-substantive amendments or additions were possible before the CEN-278 standard for DSRC became the world standard.

Ertico, the European ITS organization in Brussels, was also seen by critics of CEN as having “behaved outrageously” in issuing a press release on the CEN standard which concluded: “It is expected that a parallel voting procedure will be intiated shortly at the International Standards Organization within its technical committee TC204.” (ITS No 12, Sept/Oct p30) One US official said this was “high-handed” and “presumptuous” since the Europeans knew full well of the unacceptability of CEN-278 to the Pacific countries.

The Rokitansky Oct 16/17 move in TC-204, foreshadowed in the Ertico press release, was seen by Pacific delegates as a brazen effort to dictatorially impose the European standard in violation of both the spirit and the letter of ISO standard-making. Lee Armstrong who heads up US DSRC standardization efforts for layers 1 and 2, on contract to the US Federal Highway Administration, said Rokitansky’s move was “quite unacceptable.” He said that non-European delegates had no say in the development of the CEN-278 standard. They had been allowed to attend CEN meetings as observers but were denied copies of CEN draft documents and were precluded from making comments.

“Non-Europeans did not have any opportunity to participate in the CEN process itself. It was exclusively a European exercise. We were specifically told we could attend and observe, but not participate with comments. We were completely out of the loop. So you can understand why we were quite upset when it was implied that we had had our chance to influence 6the process and told that the time for substantive changes was over and that CEN and ISO would be one and the same. That simply wasn’t acceptable.”

“Those we will not consider”: Rokitansky at a critical point at the Berlin meeting said that all comments received on CEN-278 as the ISO standard would be divided into two groups (1) matters of language and expression (2) those that might change the meaning and intent of the standard. He said of the second category: “Those we will not consider.”

That statement created great anger, providing evidence for the sentiment that the CEN establishment has no respect for other views or interests and that it was prepared to flout established rules and procedures in an authoritarian attempt to impose a set of specifications on the world.

Canadians led the protest with Americans and Japanese joining in. Arlan Stehney the US secretary for ISO (from SAE in Warrendale PA) read out ISO rules which were being over-ridden by this proposal. With prospect of the meeting being declared illegal by US, Canadian and Japanese delegations, and lacking even vocal support from his European colleagues, Rokitansky backed down. He was forced to abandon his effort to suddenly foist CEN-278 on the rest of the world.

US, Canadian, Japanese and other delegates are irrevocably opposed to the CEN-278 standard as an international standard, and favor efforts to find a compromise standard that allows maximum harmonization of the separate emerging North American and Japanese standards with the European CEN standard. They have hoped that even if the physical and data link layers (1 and 2) of the systems are different in the 3 different regions (Europe, N.America, Japan) that common communications protocols and application approaches can be incorporated in the higher layers, gaining an important degree of international commonality.

CEN-278, now the European standard has been controversial in Europe where some of those most involved in electronic tolling (in Italy, France, Spain and Norway) have criticized it as falling short of existing backscatter systems and major groups in North American and Japan say it is thoroughly defective, because it only accomodates the modulated backscatter technology and does not properly allow for active transponders. Backscatter is in use in Europe, Asia and South America for electronic tolling. And it has been supported in principle by manufacturers of systems in use in the south and west of the US, though nowhere has it been thoughly tested in the field like the various North American and Japanese systems. CEN makes no allowance for the largest concentration of electronic tolling in the world which consists of approaching 2m active Mark IV transponders in the New York area and plans to deploy about the same number again in nearby states — NJ, MD, VA, PA, IL, DE. Also it fails to accomodate Japanese and North American plans for broader use of DSRC which focus heavily on use of active transponders and long message sets.

CEN is truck unfriendly: Skepticism about the value of CEN-278 was greatly increased just this September by the discovery of its severe limitations in the handling of large message sets. And also by the associated news that Mercedes-Benz is apparently experimenting with an alternative DSRC standard for trucks. US and Japanese DSRC experts wanted to incorporate much of layers 3 to 7 of CEN-278 into their standards as part of an international harmonization effort. They discovered independently, but almost simultaneously, in September that the CEN-278 provision for truck communications is a crock. It does not support the individual vehicle communications of long message sets routinely exchanged at North American weigh stations under the HELP and ADVANTAGE programs and at border crossings using ASTMv6. It uses a broadcast mode to communicate with trucks on the downlink and lacks the flow control to handle multi-packet messages.

“They (CEN) kept insisting it would handle the long message sets but we discovered they have never built an application to handle it and have not tested anything. We don’t believe it will work with the long messages we send. We then discovered that Mercedes-Benz is testing a new 2.45GHz DSRC for trucks, which confirms out finding that the 5.8GHz CEN standard is deficient. The Europeans if they want to do serious roadside-to-truck communications will have to have a second DSRC, which makes a mockery of the standard building exercise. A truck would have to have two transponders, one 2.45 GHz with the specialized truck communications and another 5.8GHz CEN-278 tag. It makes no sense,” said one US official participating in the meetings over CEN and ISO.

North American efforts: Meanwhile convenors report progress is being made toward North American standards. Agreement has been reached between active and passive systems manufacturers and users on a physical layer (Layer 1) document and agreement is in sight on the data link layer (Layer 2) though a couple of detailed frame structure issues need to be agreed. The standard supports both active and passive backscatter systems, since both are widely deployed and each has strong advocates. Balloting to be done by the turn of the year should be a mere formality given the final success of efforts to accomodate differing interests in formulating the draft standards. IEEE is in charge of efforts to set standards for Layers 3 to 7 and is incorporating as much CEN-278/3-7 as possible — though it is clearly not going to buy in to the broadcast mode for downlinks which prevents the CEN system handling longer multi-packet message sets as used in the truck applications. A North American DSRC standard Layers 3-7 should be ready for balloting by March 1998, according to officials working the issue.

Tests of N.Am standard: The balloting will be for a provisional North American DSRC standard. Lee Armstrong working the ASTM standard process says he is moving to get about $500,000 for building prototype hardware consisting of about 10 readers and 10 transponders to the new standard. He proposes that the existing manufacturers of DSRC be excluded from the prototype manufacture and test contract, so that there is no bias or advantage given to any existing industry participant. The test process would take most of 1998 so that, if all goes well, the provisional standard might be able to be made a finished standard by early 1999. (Contacts Lee Armstrong 617 261 7151 LRA@tiac.net, Peter Houser 619 679 6466 peter.houser@sps.globalus.com, Arlan Stehney 412 772 7157 arlan@sae.org)