Performance Aspects of Pan-European eCall in Live Networks

Inhalt:
The 3GPP/CEN standard for pan-European in-vehicle emergency call service (eCall) [1-7] which is envisioned to be used over automatic mobile 112 calls in radio networks across Europe, is currently investigated in many European countries in the context of the Harmonized eCall European Pilots (HeERO) to support its smooth introduction and to reveal any potential improvements [8]. Prior to this, an extensive field test campaign had been conducted by Qualcomm in 15 countries throughout Europe to assess the performance of a commercially available eCall implementation in 48 mobile networks [10-12]. This paper highlights the main results which serve as a reference for the national HeERO Pilots. Detailed investigation of selected mobile networks which showed weaker performance is provided. Herewith, the generally good performance of the employed in-band modem technology can be underlined. It turned out that potential issues mainly stem from configuration or implementation deficiencies. In addition, the robustness of eCall even in poor coverage and high vehicular speed scenarios can be demonstrated.