Challenges in deploying a Telematics system-Opportunities and need for global standards in Telematics system

Telematics, a fusion of telecommunication and information technology, is a complex system of integrated services and technologies. The Telematics system architecture consists of a vehicle-mounted hardware (VMH) wirelessly communicating with remote backend systems. These systems include the application servers with appropriate content integration such as maps, and the database servers which collect and publish information exchanged between the VMH and the backend systems. However there are no global standards in Telematics for industry unified architecture for interoperability requirements. This limits the flexibility of integrating multi-vendor hardware, software, GIS content and other third-party applications with the existing Telematics systems. Further, the VMH should support standard protocols for serial communication between the various electronic sub systems of the vehicle.

This paper explains about the high risk of integration challenges associated with the Telematics system due to lack of standard interfaces. The opportunities and need for adoption of global standards in the Telematics system are discussed in detail. This includes the integration of VMH with the existing vehicle electronic architecture, wireless service providers and integration of third-party content such as maps with the existing backend application and database software. This paper also proposes a modular and flexible architecture for overcoming some of these integration issues.