TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASPECT OF FLEET MANAGEMENT

Vehicle tracking and optimal route planning is important in the management of commercial vehicles. An important role in the above mentioned process is played by M2M systems called fleet management systems. The mobility of commercial vehicles influences the design of both hardware and software of the fleet management system. Thus, data transmission in mobile networks (such as GSM, UMTS and LTE) is crucial. This paper gives a review of current situation regarding FM systems with special focus on the problems and efforts regarding the mobile network and mobile data transfer. M2M communication as such cannot be profitable to mobile operators (because of the small amount of data being transmitted) and it also has new demands on the infrastructure, planning and traffic optimizing in mobile networks. Mobile operators will try to avoid changing physically their networks as long as possible by giving clients some administrative access to the SIM card management and GPRS will probably remain (for some time) the major technology used for FM systems.