A comprehensive overview of the protocols associated with Intelligent Transportation Systems
Jonas Vogt
TL;DR
This work surveys the comprehensive ITS protocol landscape across the OSI layers, spanning infrastructure backbones (DATEX II, NTCIP, OCIT, OCPP, RiLSA, TLS, TPEG2, ISO 19091) and diverse ITS application messages (CAM, DENM, SPaT, MAP, SRM, SSM, CPM, CPM, EV-related messages, and V2G signaling). It also maps the Internet-based and ITS-specific transport layers (IP, UDP/TCP, AMQP, CoAP, XMPP, MQTT, SOAP, WebSocket) and direct-communication technologies (DSRC/ITS-G5, C-V2X) alongside infrastructure channels (cellular, DAB). The paper evaluates architectures for data exchange (CONVERGE, NordicWay, InterCor, C-Roads) and EU data-sharing platforms (NAPCORE) while highlighting security/privacy frameworks (ETSI/ISO/IEC/IEEE approaches and GDPR considerations) and identifying significant ambiguities in real-time requirements and cross-standard mappings. The contribution lies in synthesizing a wide spectrum of standards, exposing interoperability bottlenecks, and guiding future standardization toward safer, privacy-preserving, and cross-border ITS deployments with clarified message semantics and architecture alignment.
Abstract
This white paper offers a comprehensive overview of the protocols utilized in the field of intelligent transportation systems (ITS). The paper presents a comprehensive overview of protocols from all layers of the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model. The protocols encompass a range of communication technologies, including ad-hoc, mobile broadband, and fiber-optic cable. All of these protocols are utilized in the field of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and must exchange information at some point. The current development leads to a much tighter connection between ecosystems that were previously isolated or not connected. This situation necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the protocols at all layers to ensure the establishment of safe and secure applications within the field of intelligent transportation systems (ITS).