The increasing demand of higher data rates while ensuring sustainability through reduced energy consumption levels call for a collective effort to define and set up the new generation of mobile communications. It is expected that some of the newly arising services will need to accurately map the environment for a seamless interaction of the physical and the digital worlds, and then require a combination of communications, positioning and sensing. The vision of MiFuture is that an evolution of massive multiple input – multiple output (MIMO), the technique that has provided the unprecedented spectral efficiency of 5G, towards ultra-massive MIMO (UmMIMO), will be a key ingredient in the future mobile radio access network. MiFuture will pave the path towards the implementation of heterogeneous cell-free networks with an ultra-massive number of antennas that will satisfy the throughput, energy efficiency, positioning accuracy and feasible complexity requirements that the evolution of mobile communications towards 6G demands. This evolution will require a new generation of excellent researchers able to address the emerging complex engineering problems that the thriving area of mobile communications is facing. MiFuture will develop a high-level personalised multidisciplinary programme to provide 15 Ph.D. candidates, supervised by committed experts from industry and academia, with research competences and transferable skills (e.g., entrepreneurship, project management, IPR, open access) with the long-term goal to lead scientific advances in the new concepts arising in the field of wireless communications. These creative young researchers will face real world implementation, work across multiple European countries and organisations, become knowledgeable in standardisation activities, present at workshops in front of researchers and industrial stakeholders and interact with the general public to make them aware of how 6G can help in their daily lives.

5GMed brings together key stakeholders of the “Barcelona – Perpignan” cross-border section of the Mediterranean corridor including MNOs, road and rail operators and neutral hosts, complemented with innovative SMEs developing AI functions, and selected R&D centers with a proven track record in 5G research and innovation. Given the proximity of the E15 highway and the high-speed rail track in the considered cross-border section, the 5GMed consortium will demonstrate how a multi-stakeholder 5G infrastructure featuring a variety of technologies, including Rel.16 5GNR at 3.5 GHz, Rel.16 NR-V2X at 5.9 GHz, unlicensed mm-wave, network slicing and service orchestration, can be used to jointly deliver CCAM and FRMCS services. The considered CCAM use cases include Remote Driving in cross-border open roads to enable safe fallback operation in Level 4 autonomous driving, and the massive sensorization of road infrastructures enabling AI-powered traffic management algorithms in the presence of legacy vehicles. The considered FRMCS use cases include performance services where AI-functions running on the infrastructure side analyze camera feeds from high speed trains in real-time, and business services providing high-speed internet to passengers and in-train neutral hosting capabilities to MNOs. A Follow Me Infotainment use case will demonstrate live migration of media functions across cross-border scenarios both in automotive and railways environments. The technical activities of 5GMed are complemented by a carefully designed impact maximization strategy including: i) demonstrations in key industrial events, ii) concrete measures to influence standardization and policy makers, iii) cost-benefit analysis of the 5GMed deployment models, and iv) joint exploitation and business modes. 5GMed ambitions to become the lighthouse project for CCAM and FRMCS deployment in cross-border scenarios that can be replicated across Europe and trigger further investments through the CEF2 program.

The objective of the BIG IoT project is to ignite really vibrant Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems. We will achieve this by bridging the current interoperability gap between the vertically integrated IoT platforms and by creating marketplaces for IoT services and applications. Despite various research and innovation projects working on the Internet of Things, no broadly accepted professional IoT ecosystems exist. The reason for that are high market entry barriers for developers and service providers due to a fragmentation of IoT platforms. The goal of this project is to overcome these hurdles by Bridging the Interoperability Gap of the IoT and by creating marketplaces for service and application providers as well as platform operators. We will address the interoperability gap by defining a generic, unified Web API for smart object platforms, called the BIG IoT API. The establishment of a marketplace where platform, application, and service providers can monetize their assets will introduce an incentive to grant access to formerly closed systems and lower market entry barriers for developers. The BIG IoT consortium is well suited to reach the outlined goals, as it comprises all roles of an IoT ecosystem: resource providers (e.g., SIEMENS, SEAT), service and application developers (e.g., VODAFONE, VMZ), marketplace providers (e.g., ATOS), platform providers (e.g., BOSCH, CSI, ECONAIS), as well as end users connected through the public private partnerships of WAG and CSI or the user-focused information services that VMZ provides for the city of Berlin. The major industry players cover multiple domains, including mobility, automotive, telecommunications, and IT services. Four university departments will help to transfer the state of the art into the state of the practice and solve the open research challenges. This consortium will mobilise the necessary critical mass at European level to achieve the goals and to reach the ireach the impacts set out in this project.