scope:

Metallised windscreens are produced by spraying small metal particles on one of the glass or plastic layers of the vehicle's windscreen. This leads to a windscreen with high thermal qualities, ranging from far-reduced power consumption by air-conditioning equipment to short times for de-icing. The production of certain vehicles in Europe which were equipped with metallised windscreens has created a major problem for the installation and operation of On-Board Units (OBUs) which rely on Dedicated Short- Range Communications (DSRC) for ITS (as the most-widely deployed DSRC ITS application to date, the remainder of this report will refer to Electronic Toll Collection (EFC) but the developed solutions will be valid for all DSRC ITS applications). As is shown in Table 1, windscreen properties have a decisive influence on the transmission of microwave communication and, for metallised windows, it is essential to compensate these losses by special measures (Ref 1).