The European Electronic Toll Service (EETS)

GUIDE FOR THE APPLICATION OF THE DIRECTIVE ON THE INTEROPERABILITY OF ELECTRONIC ROAD TOLL SYSTEMS
2.4. EETS general architecture
Based on Annex II (EETS stakeholder roles and interfaces) to and Chapter II (General principles) of Decision 2009/750/EC, this
section provides a description of the technical systems and interfaces essential to the EETS interoperability scheme.
All other systems and interfaces are implemented under the responsibility of the relevant stakeholder. This allows differentiation of
the services and competition on the market. In particular, the described EETS general architecture does not propose a method for
detecting toll events. EETS Providers may implement different solutions, e.g. thick or smart clients, which provide geo-referencing
and toll calculation inside the OBE, or so-called thin clients, which only gather elementary time/position data and report them
to at least the EETS Providers’ back-office systems for further processing. Toll Chargers may require receiving complete toll
transactions in their back-offices.
The figure underneath illustrates the EETS general architecture. It identifies four entities corresponding to actual systems or groups
of systems, as well as their interfaces. The general architecture comprises only the entities mentioned in Decision 2009/750/EC
on EETS definition. It covers more detailed models, like the architecture described in the RCI study. For example the optional
proxy-element in the EETS front-end proposed in the RCI architecture can be assigned to the EETS Providers’ back-office systems.
The figure is also compliant with the stakeholder roles model of Cesare III ( 12 ).
The proposed EETS general architecture puts in evidence the main interfaces between the entities.
OBE
2
EETS Provider’s
back-office systems
16
1
3
Fixed or
mobile roadside
equipment
4OBE
Toll Charger’s
back-office systems
Two of the four main interfaces (interfaces 1 and 3) are essential to achieve interoperability between the EETS Providers’ and Toll
Chargers’ equipment. These interfaces need therefore to be standardised to achieve an efficient implementation of the EETS
architecture.
1. Interface 1 carries all the interoperable data exchange between an EETS Provider’s OBE and a Toll Charger’s fixed or mobile
roadside equipment. Annex II to Decision 2009/750/EC identifies the following sub-interfaces:
(a) DSRC (dedicated short-range communication) charging transactions;
( 12 ) See Section 3.2 of Annex 3 to this guide for Internet links to the related reports.