It defines enhancements to 802.11 (the basis of products marketed as Wi-Fi) required to support intelligent transportation systems (ITS) applications.
[4] ITS G5 and GeoNetworking is being standardised by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute group for Intelligent Transport Systems.
[5] Because the communication link between the vehicles and the roadside infrastructure might exist for only a short time interval, the IEEE 802.11p amendment defines a method to exchange data through that link without the need to establish a basic service set (BSS), thus without the need to wait on the association and authentication procedures to complete prior to exchanging data.
This allows the receiver to better cope with the characteristics of the radio channel in vehicular communications environments, especially echoes of signals reflected by moving objects.
[8] In August 2008, the European Commission allocated part of the 5.9 GHz band for priority transport safety applications[9] and inter-vehicle, infrastructure communications.
[10] The intention is that compatibility with the USA will be ensured even if the allocation is not exactly the same; frequencies will be sufficiently close to enable the use of the same antenna and radio transmitter/receiver.