TERAWAY will develop a disruptive generation of THz transceivers that can overcome the current limitations of THz technology and enable its commercial uptake. Leveraging optical concepts and photonic integration techniques, TERAWAY will develop a common technology base for the generation, emission and detection of wireless signals within an ultra-wide range of carrier frequencies that will cover the W (92-114.5 GHz), D (130-174.8 GHz) and THz band (252-322 GHz). In this way, the project will provide for the first time the possibility to organize the spectral resources of a network within these bands into a common pool of radio resources that can be flexibly coordinated and used. In parallel, the use of photonics will enable the development of multi-channel transceivers with amplification of the wireless signals in the optical domain and with multi-beam optical beamforming in order to have a radical increase in the directivity of each wireless beam. At the end of this development, TERAWAY will make available a set of truly disruptive transceivers including a 2- and a 4-channel module with operation from 92 up to 322 GHz, data rate per channel up to 108 Gb/s, transmission reach in the THz band of more than 400 m, and possibility for the formation of wireless beams that can be independently steered in order to establish backhaul and fronthaul connections between a set of fixed and moving nodes. TERAWAY will evaluate these transceivers under an application scenario of communication and surveillance coverage of outdoor mega-events using moving nodes in the form of drones that will carry a gNB or the radio part of it. The network during the implementation of this scenario in the 5G testbed of AALTO will be controlled by an innovative SDN controller that will perform the management of the network and radio resources in a homogeneous way with large benefits for the network performance, energy efficiency, slicing efficiency and possibility to support heterogeneous services.

As an interdisciplinary endeavour, the GREET network brings together leading institutions and companies in Cyber-Physical System (CPS), AI, software engineering and cognitive interaction research across Europe with the aim of training a new generation of scientists, technologists, and entrepreneurs that will move Europe into a leading role in the scientific and technological innovation in Generative AI-driven CPS, its proactivity and explainability. Linking the leading academic and industrial partners in the above areas, GREET will form an effective and unique training network powerfully combining the best research training with a range of academic and industrial placements, specialist research and knowledge transfer workshops. It will develop and train a new generation of young researchers through a set of key research projects, developing breakthrough CPS systems and services that feature generative cognition, explainee-aware generative explainability, and transparent proactivity in highly secured CPS eco-environments. It will shape the delivery of training in the novel generative AI-driven CPS across Europe: delivering key insights into the science and models of the proposed CPS, setting up its scientific foundation, and equipping the DN’s recruited Doctoral Candidates with skills to drive the next innovative steps in this key area of generative AI-driven CPS. These steps include building a sustainable innovation ecosphere and community, disseminating and exploiting this new CPS’s learning and understanding of the eco-internals, eco-surroundings and eco-dynamics in many vital societal and economic services, including Industry 5.0, smart city, healthcare, energy, emergency handling, social robotics and elderly care. The innovation perspective of these new CPS is substantial, which will be particularly important for handling services that involve humans and in critical situations, e.g., in emergency and hazardous environments.

The 6G Smart Networks of the future will provide the high-performance and energy-efficient infrastructure on which next generation internet and other services can be developed and deployed. 6G will foster an Industry revolution and digital transformation and will accelerate the building of smart societies leading to quality-of-life improvements, facilitating autonomous systems, haptic communication and smart healthcare. To achieve the aforementioned objectives in a sustainable way, it is well understood that new approaches are needed in the way the telco infrastructures are architected, federated and orchestrated. These new approaches call for multi-stakeholder ecosystems that promote synergies among MNOs and owners of all kinds or computational and networking resources that will share the extraordinary costs of yet another generation upgrade from 5G to 6G, while facilitating new business models. It is clear, that the new architecture paradigms bring unprecedented complexity due to the sheer scale and heterogeneity of the orchestration domains involved, that should be matched by equally capable automation capabilities, thus 6G is aiming for the “holy grail” of pervasive AI-driven intelligence, termed as Native AI. However, the multi-stakeholder infrastructures foreseen in 6G as per the “network of networks” concept, will add a level of unprecedented management complexity due to the sheer scale and heterogeneity of the orchestration domains involved. 6G-INTENSE aims to abstract and federate all kinds of computational and communication resources under an internet-scale framework, that is governed by an intelligent orchestration paradigm, termed as DIMO.

The pinnacle of community driven urban energy transition are Positive Energy Districts (PED). They improve energy efficiency, integrate local renewables and excess heat more effectively and enable interaction with the energy and non-energy sectors like mobility, ICT and industry. A crucial, and often neglected complication is that PEDs are in constant evolution. This is due to ever-evolving changes in their environment: social context, legislation, energy market, increased electric vehicles, etc. As such, there is a strong analogy with the theory of evolution. Although the DNA between PEDs varies, the implementation and evolution of different PEDs is not a process of chance: the environment determines the probability of success in the urban energy transition. The PEDvolution project paves the way for cross-sectoral integration of ever-evolving PEDs. This over a duration of three years, consisting of three consecutive phases: analyse, co-develop and demonstrate. European pioneers in PED conceptualisation, implementation and tool development will co-develop and implement seven interoperable solutions accommodating the constant evolution of PEDs: 1) PED Design and Planning Toolset, 2) PED Readiness Assessment, 3) Dynamic Decision Support Guideline for PED Development, 4) PED Energy Manager, 5) Data Exchange, Integration and Interoperability Platform, 6) PED Business Models, 7) Social Innovation tool. These PEDvolution solutions will evaluate and improve the ‘PED Readiness Level’ according to the four genes of the PED genotype: social, technology, interoperability, and market. These are influenced by their interaction within the PED and its environment (PED phenotype). At least six real-life PEDs across Europe, will provide a demonstration and validation environment for the solutions, paving the way for replication, upscaling and mainstreaming.