The Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) will be the 5G worldwide standard for railway operational communications, conforming to European regulation as well as responding to the needs and obligations of rail organisations outside of Europe. The work on functional & technical requirements, specification & standardisation in 3GPP as well as regarding harmonised spectrum solutions is currently led by UIC, in cooperation with the whole railway sector. A major challenge is the update by European Railway Agency of the Technical Specifications for Interoperability of Control Command and Signalling (CCS TSI) by the end of 2022 with a full description of FRMCS with respect to interoperability functions. Therefore, the 5GRAIL project aims to verify the first set of FRMCS specifications and standards (FRMCS V1) by developing and testing prototypes of the FRMCS ecosystem. The validation of the latest available railway-relevant 5G specifications will be achieved through cross-border emulation trials covering significant portions of railway operational communication requirements and including the core technological innovations for rail expected from 5G release 16 and pre-release 17. The project will first define functional tests and then work towards the development and evaluation of prototypes, for both on-board and infrastructure, including vital (ETCS, ATO) and essential (voice specific services, TCMS and video) applications. Prototypes will be then tested in simulated and real environments, with pilots in labs and in the field rolled out in various European sites (France, Hungary and Germany), to ensure compliancy and validation for FRMCS specifications, standards and performance, and consequently guarantee the time to market for FRMCS deployments, planned for 2025 as per European timeline. 5GRAIL will finally deliver test report conclusions to potentially update FRMCS V1 specifications and to identify technical constraints related to implementation issues.

5G-TIMBER project aims to validate through robust evidence the latest 5G Industrial Private Network features and standards specifications for Wood Value Chain (WVC) under realistic conditions. In particular, to conduct advanced field trials of the more representative and innovative data-driven material, production and installation flows that implicate manufacturing across 4 prominent industries in the wood sector including, machinery and wood house elements manufacturing, construction and renovation towards green buildings, wood waste valorisation, and established telecom SME industries in a project remit that spans 3 representative European regions (Norway, Estonia, Finland). The project incentivises the opportunistic uptake of 5G in real-life business conditions. Specifically, 5G- TIMBER will target to increase wood-based materials recycling by 50%, increase manufacturing productivity by 15%, reach 99% of the work done in the factory (vs. 85% today), reduce on-site work by 10%, reduce product nonconformities by 10%, and increase the safety of workers in wooden houses production and onsite assembling. Validation of above overall targets through >100 interdisciplinary innovation driven technical, business and service-level KPIs for 09 diverse WVC usecases across 3 categories i.e., data driven sawmill woodworking machines; modular wood-house factory; construction and renovation with wooden elements, valorisation of composite waste. Usecases will be incrementally validated by 2 lab trials followed by 2 field trials in iterative cycle covering significant portions of end-to-end WVC. 5G-TIMBER also includes a comprehensive business case and exploitation strategy that incorporates novel approaches to materializing the value of data produced in industrial environments based upon 4 distinct business models. Our 16-partner consortium is driven by strong industrial and SME partners, renowned organisations the majority of which participate in FoF cPPP, 5G-PPP, GD projects.

The 6G-NTN project aims at researching and developing innovative technical, business, regulatory, and standardization enablers to achieve full and seamless integration of the Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) component into the 6G system and establish the European leadership in this domain. The vision is to extend coverage, resilience, and sustainability of next generation mobile networks, meeting needs and expectations of both vertical and consumer market segments, while unleashing new value chains and creating broad societal impact. The proposed concept of full-fledged integration of the NTN component into 6G leverages multiple key project outcomes that will pave the way for a service roll-out in the 2030-35 time frame: - a sustainable and resilient 3D multi-layered (GSO, NGSO, HAPS, drones) network architecture. - a software defined payload adapted to all flying platforms and all frequency bands - a very low Earth orbiting space segment - a flexible waveform supporting terrestrial and non-terrestrial deployments. - the support of smart phones and vehicle/drone mounted terminals - the use of new spectrum (i.e. C and Q/V bands) in coexistence with the terrestrial network component - high accuracy and reliable positioning solutions. The newly designed NTN component will deliver: i.e. uRLLC (latency < 10 ms) and advanced eMBB (data rate up to several hundred of Mbps) services to vehicle, drone mounted ultra-small size devices, and battery activated nomadic terminals; ii. improved eMBB services to smartphones; iii. short emergency messaging services to smartphones in light indoor/in-vehicle environments; and iv. high accuracy (<10 cm) and reliable location service to both devices categories. By pulling together leading players across all involved industrial, research and innovation areas, the 6G-NTN ambition is to become the flagship R&I project to define the 6G NTN component and to drive its standardization in 3GPP.