Open Architecture, A New Concept in Vehicle Location Systems

Lynn Stoddart

Abstract:	It has been said that the only constant inlife is that change is certain. This is certainly true in the field of electronics where products can be obsolete prior even to full production release. This is especially true when an entire technology and marketplace are yet in their infancy. Change is also to be expected when standards are being introduced or modified. GPS-based products certainly fit into that category. Products and companies that were very visible as little as three years ago are non-existent today. Many electronic products have been designed in response to a certain application; to fill a certain niche in the marketplace. In many cases products are not functional as far as the customer is concerned, even upon introduction, because of insufficient definition, lack of understanding or changes in the niche, poor design techniques, or many other problems. In some cases these errors can be catastrophic and require a complete redesign or possibly even miss the market niche entirely. TransTrak, Inc. has developed its GPS-based StellarTrak and RouteTrak systems utilizing an open architecture to minimize the impact of such occurrences. StellarTrak is a real-time vehicle tracking and location system using a regular voice radio to transmit digital information packets back to a base station for overlay on a city map on a computer screen. RouteTrak is a self-contained system that retains in itself a history of the vehicle’s location. Because of the open architecture design philosophy of the systems, two areas of flexibility are immediately apparent; functionality and interfacing. Much of the functionality of both systems is accomplished in firmware. In fact, both systems utilize the same basic hardware platform. Modifications are, for the most part, relatively minor firmware changes. For example, additional functionality is easily implemented for specific requirements. Status information, going in both directions, is easily customized for a customer’s individual needs. Full messaging capability, an extension of status information flow, has been tested and is operational. Interfacing considerations are extremely important to customers now evaluating vehicle location and tracking systems. They want to ensure that their investment will be protected when the new IVHS standards are defined and adopted. These standards have not yet been fully defined and systems procured now must be adaptable to meet these standards. By the use of firmware to implement the system interfaces, TransTrak will be able to rapidly meet the standards as they are approved for Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS) and other standards as they come to the forefront. Open architecture design also allows rapid modification to new market niches. For example, the system could even be used as a “protocol” converter between two dissimilar protocols with a simple firmware modification. This may turn out to be an extremely important feature, should United States standards differ from European or other approved standards.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 7th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1994) September 20 - 23, 1994 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	491 - 499
Cite this article:	Stoddart, Lynn, "Open Architecture, A New Concept in Vehicle Location Systems," Proceedings of the 7th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1994), Salt Lake City, UT, September 1994, pp. 491-499.
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