About

The project NOW: Network on Wheels was founded by Daimler AG, BMW AG, Volkswagen AG, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, NEC Deutschland GmbH and Siemens AG in 2004. Siemens left the consortium in 2006. Their part was taken over by IMST GmbH and embedded wireless GmbH. NoW is a German research project which is supported by Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Besides the partners the Universities of Mannheim, Karlsruhe and Munich and the Carmeq GmbH co-operate within NOW.

The main objectives are to solve technical key questions on the communication protocols and data security for car-to-car communications and to submit the results to the standardization activities of the Car2Car Communication Consortium, which is an initiative of major European car manufacturers and suppliers. Furthermore, a test bed for functional tests and demonstrations is implemented which will be developed further on toward a reference system for the Car2Car Communication Consortium specifications.

The communications protocols developed in NOW: Network on wheels will support active safety applications as well as infotainment applications and will thus provide an open communication platform for a broad spectrum of applications. This is of particular importance regarding the market introduction of car-to-car communication systems.