Instruments of Transport Policy.

The material in this Working Paper was generated as input to DETR's Guidance on the Methodology for Multi Modal Studies (GOMMMS). DETR subsequently decided only to provide summary information on transport policy measures, and to leave the consultants involved in individual multi modal studies to make their own assessment of individual policy measures in the context of specific study areas. It has been decided to make this fuller document available as a reference source. The purpose of the review of policy measures was to provide summary information on the range of policy measures available, experience of their use and, based on past studies, their potential contribution to the range of policy objectives specified for GOMMMS. The review was based on an earlier one included in the Institution of Highways and Transportation's Guidelines on Developing Urban Transport Strategies (1996). This material was updated using references published since 1996 and expanded to cover policy measures relevant in inter-urban areas. It had been intended to circulate it for comment before publishing a revised version. However, DETR decided to use an abridged version before this consultation was complete. It should be borne in mind that this document has not, therefore, undergone the peer assessment which had been intended. To avoid unnecessary further work, the material is presented as it had been drafted for the GOMMMS Guidance document. The only modifications have been to change the chapter and paragraph numbers, and to remove the cross references to other parts of the Guidance document

Taxation of Road Goods Vehicles – An Economic Assessment

This paper reviews the current position, recent research and potential future areas of research relating to road track costs, with particular reference to Heavy Goods Vehicles. It opens with a theoretical discussion, which concludes that the appropriate basis for changing is long run marginal social cost, but casts some doubt on whether the existing cost allocation procedure achieves this. The main reason for this is the likelihood that the marginal capital cost per unit of traffic of coping with an increase in traffic volumes greatly exceeds the average capital cost per unit of traffic at the present time. The DTp method of allocating track costs is then outlined, and the sensitivity of the results to variations in a number of the key assumptions is tested. The results show that the DTp method may only be allocating HGVfs as little as half of their costs. Hence instead of covering their allocated costs by some 30% to allow for environmental effects, as the DTp. claim, it may be that these lorries are only meeting 65% of their allocated cost. The sensitivity tests that yield the above results reflect the following concerns: (1) FUEL CONSUMPTION DTp measures lorry mileage and deduces fuel used and hence fuel tax paid. However, their fuel consumption figures look implausibly high. We have used FTA figures instead. (2) TRAFFIC FLOW DTp currently allocate many costs to vehicle kilometres (e.g. drainage, winter maintenance, traffic signs etc.), but accepts that the demand for a new road arises in proportion to PCUs (passenger car units), i.e. giving more weight to lorries. Our view is that once a road is opened any general costs involved in its continued use should also be allocated by PCUs. (3) LORRY WEIGHTS DTp use lorry weights as reported on a self completion questionnaire, which naturally omit any overloading. We have used observed values from a large study in Cheshire. (4) CAPITAL EXPENDITURE DTp charge only what is currently being spent. Following cutbacks in all government expenditure, this amount is now some 50% lower than in the early 1970s. Since capital expenditure was roughly 60% of total road expenditure, this implies that cost allocations have fallen by 30% on this account. Our view is that even this understates the true long run marginal cost of road traffic. Although the precise figures are subject to much doubt, in every case there seems good reason to suppose that the proposition is broadly correct. Taken cumulatively, they would be sufficient to convert the existing overpayment by HGVs (which presumably is intended to reflect unquantified environmental costs) into a substantial underpayment. If the increase in road haulage taxation which these figures would imply is politically unacceptable, then there is a good case for corresponding action to relieve the rail and water modes of part of their infrastructure costs

Motorway Vehicular Networks with Renewable Energy Powered Access Points

The goal of this work is to consider the potential of using renewable energy only to power roadside units (RSUs), which not only reduces CO2 footprint but also reduces the infrastructure needed in motorway vehicular communication. The thesis begins with collation and analysis of wind and motorway traffic data for the purpose of determining the energy demand of vehicular networks as well as the energy supply obtainable from wind. This is followed by the study of a standalone RSU powered by wind energy. Small size standalone wind energy systems which have benefits of low cost, easy and large scale deployments are implemented for the low power RSUs. The concept of wind energy based rate adaptation is introduced and implemented in the RSU through which RSU can vary transmission power according to the availability of wind energy. This reduces the outage and improves the overall service quality. Traditionally rate adaptation was employed to cater for wireless channel unavailability. A queuing model for the RSU is developed and verified through simulation to evaluate the performance in terms of delay, packet loss and utilisation. Channel fading is considered and the performance of the RSU is re-evaluated in terms of the same quality of service parameters, viz. delay, packet loss and utilisation to investigate the impact of fading in the network. Next, the reliability of the RSU is redefined in the context of unavailability of sufficient wind power. The transient nature of wind energy causes the RSUs to either transmit at full data rate or not transmit at all depending on the availability of sufficient energy. Thus, a failure occurs when the wind power is less than the load. Therefore, a framework has been developed for redefining a number of reliability parameters in the context of wind powered RSUs. A detailed wind data analysis was carried out based upon the hourly wind speed obtained from the UK air information resource (AIR) database for a period of five years, to determine the energy model of the deployed micro-turbine. An energy storage device (a small battery) is connected to the micro-wind turbine for improved service quality

Radio Resource Management for Satellite UMTS. Dynamic scheduling algorithm for a UMTS-compatible satellite network.

The third generation of mobile communication systems introduce interactive Multicast and Unicast multimedia services at a fast data rate of up to 2 Mbps and is expected to complete the globalization of the mobile telecommunication systems. The implementation of these services on satellite systems, particularly for broadcast and multicast applications to complement terrestrial services is ideal since satellite systems are capable of providing global coverage in areas not served by terrestrial telecommunication services. However, the main bottleneck of such systems is the scarcity of radio resources for supporting multimedia applications which has resulted in the rapid growth in research efforts for deriving efficient radio resource management techniques. This issue is addressed in this thesis, where the main emphasis is to design a dynamic scheduling framework and algorithm that can improve the overall performance of the radio resource management strategy of a UMTS compatible satellite network, taking into account the unique characteristics of wireless channel conditions. This thesis will initially be focused on the design of the network and functional architecture of a UMTS -compatible satellite network. Based on this architecture, an effective scheduling framework is designed, which can provide different types of resource assigning strategies. A functional model of scheduler is defined to describe the behaviours and interactions between different functional entities. An OPNET simulation model with a complete network protocol stack is developed to validate the performance of the scheduling algorithms implemented in the satellite network. Different types of traffic are considered for the OPNET simulation, such as the Poisson Process, ONOFF Source and Self Similar Process, so that the performance of scheduling algorithm can be analyzed for different types of services. A novel scheduling algorithm is proposed to optimise the channel utilisation by considering the characteristics of the wireless channel, which are bursty and location dependent. In order to overcome the channel errors, different code rates are applied for the user under different channel conditions. The proposed scheduling algorithm is designed to give higher priority to users with higher code rate, so that the throughput of network is optimized and at the same time, maintaining the end users¿ service level agreements. The fairness of the proposed scheduling algorithm is validated using OPNET simulation. The simulation results show that the algorithm can fairly allocate resource to different connections not only among different service classes but also within the same service class depending on their QoS attributes.Inmarsat Global Ltd. BGAN and the European Space Agency (ESA

On Transmission System Design for Wireless Broadcasting

This thesis considers aspects related to the design and standardisation of transmission systems for wireless broadcasting, comprising terrestrial and mobile reception. The purpose is to identify which factors influence the technical decisions and what issues could be better considered in the design process in order to assess different use cases, service scenarios and end-user quality. Further, the necessity of cross-layer optimisation for efficient data transmission is emphasised and means to take this into consideration are suggested. The work is mainly related terrestrial and mobile digital video broadcasting systems but many of the findings can be generalised also to other transmission systems and design processes. The work has led to three main conclusions. First, it is discovered that there are no sufficiently accurate error criteria for measuring the subjective perceived audiovisual quality that could be utilised in transmission system design. Means for designing new error criteria for mobile TV (television) services are suggested and similar work related to other services is recommended. Second, it is suggested that in addition to commercial requirements there should be technical requirements setting the frame work for the design process of a new transmission system. The technical requirements should include the assessed reception conditions, technical quality of service and service functionalities. Reception conditions comprise radio channel models, receiver types and antenna types. Technical quality of service consists of bandwidth, timeliness and reliability. Of these, the thesis focuses on radio channel models and errorcriteria (reliability) as two of the most important design challenges and provides means to optimise transmission parameters based on these. Third, the thesis argues that the most favourable development for wireless broadcasting would be a single system suitable for all scenarios of wireless broadcasting. It is claimed that there are no major technical obstacles to achieve this and that the recently published second generation digital terrestrial television broadcasting system provides a good basis. The challenges and opportunities of a universal wireless broadcasting system are discussed mainly from technical but briefly also from commercial and regulatory aspectSiirretty Doriast

Coordinated Multicast/Unicast Transmission on 5G: A Novel Approach for Linear Broadcasting

Linear broadcasting services, with a scheduled programming, constitute a paramount tel-ecommunication service for today’s society. Although the existing technology is mature, current linear broadcast systems have serious limitations when providing service to moving users or users placed in areas with complex orography and poor signal quality. To over-come these limitations, 3GPP 5G standard has included a work item to support 5G mul-ticast/broadcast services for future Release 17. This paper investigates the integration of point-to-point (unicast) communication with cellular multicast/broadcast on 5G technology to extend the current support of linear broadcasting services. This integration relies on the use mobile edge computing (MEC) at the 5G base station (gNB) to host a dynamic adap-tive streaming over HTTP (DASH) server that is coordinated with the multicast transmis-sion to complement the broadcast service. This approach join the reliability of point-to-point communications, with dedicated resources for each user, with the spectrum efficiency of multi-cast communications, where a set of users share common resources. The coopera-tion between those unicast and multicast schemes allows those users whose coverage is not good enough, to complete the linear broadcast flow through the point-to-point transmission via MEC. The benefits of such approach have been assessed with simulations in a realistic scenario that considers a vehicle moving across a sparsely populated region in southern Spain. Results reveals that throughput and bitrate playback (reproduction rate) are greatly improved when unicast/multicast integration is enabled since the number of stalling events is reduced significantly.This work has been partially supported by Radio Televisión Española through Impulsa Visión RTVE grant and by the Universidad de Málaga. We are grateful to Pere Vila, Esteban Mayoral Campos, Adolfo Muñoz Berrón and Miguel Ángel Bona San Vicente for their support and collaboration during the development of the project. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBU

COST EFFICIENT PROVISIONING OF MASS MOBILE MULTIMEDIA SERVICES IN HYBRID CELLULAR AND BROADCASTING SYSTEMS

Uno de los retos a los que se enfrenta la industria de las comunicaciones móviles e inalámbricas es proporcionar servicios multimedia masivos a bajo coste, haciéndolos asequibles para los usuarios y rentables a los operadores. El servicio más representativo es el de TV móvil, el cual se espera que sea una aplicación clave en las futuras redes móviles. Actualmente las redes celulares no pueden soportar un consumo a gran escala de este tipo de servicios, y las nuevas redes de radiodifusión móvil son muy costosas de desplegar debido a la gran inversión en infraestructura de red necesaria para proporcionar niveles aceptables de cobertura. Esta tesis doctoral aborda el problema de la provisión eficiente de servicios multimedia masivos a dispositivos móviles y portables utilizando la infraestructura de radiodifusión y celular existente. La tesis contempla las tecnologías comerciales de última generación para la radiodifusión móvil (DVB-H) y para las redes celulares (redes 3G+ con HSDPA y MBMS), aunque se centra principalmente en DVB-H. El principal paradigma propuesto para proporcionar servicios multimedia masivos a bajo coste es evitar el despliegue de una red DVB-H con alta capacidad y cobertura desde el inicio. En su lugar se propone realizar un despliegue progresivo de la infraestructura DVB-H siguiendo la demanda de los usuarios. Bajo este contexto, la red celular es fundamental para evitar sobre-dimensionar la red DVB-H en capacidad y también en áreas con una baja densidad de usuarios hasta que el despliegue de un transmisor o un repetidor DVB-H sea necesario. Como principal solución tecnológica la tesis propone realizar una codificación multi-burst en DVB-H utilizando códigos Raptor. El objetivo es explotar la diversidad temporal del canal móvil para aumentar la robustez de la señal y, por tanto, el nivel de cobertura, a costa de incrementar la latencia de la red.Gómez Barquero, D. (2009). COST EFFICIENT PROVISIONING OF MASS MOBILE MULTIMEDIA SERVICES IN HYBRID CELLULAR AND BROADCASTING SYSTEMS [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/6881Palanci

Approximate reinforcement learning to control beaconing congestion in distributed networks

In vehicular communications, the increase of the channel load caused by excessive periodical messages (beacons) is an important aspect which must be controlled to ensure the appropriate operation of safety applications and driver-assistance systems. To date, the majority of congestion control solutions involve including additional information in the payload of the messages transmitted, which may jeopardize the appropriate operation of these control solutions when channel conditions are unfavorable, provoking packet losses. This study exploits the advantages of non-cooperative, distributed beaconing allocation, in which vehicles operate independently without requiring any costly road infrastructure. In particular, we formulate the beaconing rate control problem as a Markov Decision Process and solve it using approximate reinforcement learning to carry out optimal actions. Results obtained were compared with other traditional solutions, revealing that our approach, called SSFA, is able to keep a certain fraction of the channel capacity available, which guarantees the delivery of emergency-related notifications with faster convergence than other proposals. Moreover, good performance was obtained in terms of packet delivery and collision ratios.This research has been supported by the projects AIM, ref. TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R, ARISE2 “Future IoT Networks and Nano-networks (FINe)” ref. PID2020-116329GB-C22, ONOFRE-3, ref. PID2020-112675RB-C41 [Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), European Union (EU)], ATENTO, ref. 20889/PI/18 (Fundación Séneca, Región de Murcia), and LIFE [Fondo SUPERA Covid-19, funded by Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Universidades Españolas and Banco Santander]. J.A.P. thanks the Spanish MECD for an FPI grant ref. BES-2017-081061. Finally, the authors acknowledge Laura Wettersten for her contribution in reviewing the grammar and spell of the manuscript