To satisfy the expected plethora of demanding services, 6G is envisioned as a revolutionary paradigm to carry forward the capacities of enhanced broadband, massive access, and Ultra-reliable and low latency services in 5G wireless networks to a more robust and intelligent level. This move will introduce significant new multidisciplinary research challenges emerging throughout the wireless communication protocol stacks, including the way the mobile network is modelled and deployed. The structure of 6G networks will be highly heterogeneous, densely deployed, and dynamic. Combined with the tight quality of services, such complex architecture will result in the untenability of legacy network operation routines. In response, artificial intelligence (AI), especially machine learning (ML), Semantic Communication and Digital Twin (DT) are emerging as solutions to realize the fully intelligent network orchestration and management. By learning from uncertain and dynamic environments, AI-enabled channel estimation and spectrum management will open up opportunities for bringing the excellent performance of Ultra-broadband techniques into full play. Additionally, challenges brought by Ultra-massive access concerning energy and security can be mitigated by applying AI-based approaches. The overall research objective of the SCION project is to develop and design the network systems for seamless wireless access for Secure and Intelligent Massive Machine-to-Machine Communications for 6G. In addition to technology development, to meet the urgent needs for the future working force of the coming 6G era, this collaborative project will create a training network for Doctoral Candidates who will contribute to the design and implementation of future 6G networks.

The overall objective of the ROAM project is to investigate and demonstrate the use of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes of light for communications and networking. Two are the primary objectives. The firs objective is to exploit the use of OAM modes in optical fibres as a disruptive means of increasing optical fibre transmission capacity for short-reach high data density applications. A transmission testbed utilising OAM multiplexing and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) dimensions will be demonstrated. The target will be a 10x or more capacity increase by employing 10 or more OAM multiplexed channels over a conventional WDM system. The combination of 10x OAM states with 16 wavelength channels will provide a total of 160 multiplexed channels. Full compatibility with legacy technologies will be demonstrated. Speciality fibres will be employed to support OAM modes transmission in the range up to 2 km. The second objective is to exploit the use of OAM domain as a switching resource in conjunctions with the wavelength domain to significantly improve the scalability and the power consumption of the switches in data-centres applications. A 10x improvement of the scalability of the data-centre switches will be targeted with the study and development of an OAM-based switch compatible with the WDM layer. A switch exploiting 10 OAM modes and 16 wavelengths as switching domains will be implemented. The developed two-layer switch will enable a more than 10x reduction of power consumption/Gb/s with respect to the current commercial switches. OAM switch configuration time of 100 ns will be demonstrated, with 8x improvement with respect to commercial switches. The project goals will be enabled by integrated high performance OAM components build on silicon photonics technology. ROAM consortium is composed by three universities, two research institutes, and two large companies, with the required knowledge and infrastructures to satisfy the project objectives.

FUDGE-5G aims to create a new generation of world leading 5G core network technology companies for private 5G networks based in Europe. FUDGE-5G will make a leap forward in realizing the notion of cloud-native 5G private networks by developing a further enhanced Service-Based Architecture (eSBA) for both control plane and user plane with “decomposed” players of the ecosystem divided into: New Radio (NR) access network infrastructure provider, eSBA platform provider, mobile 5G Core (5GC) provider, vertical application orchestration provider and vertical service provider. The forward-looking FUDGE-5G architecture will also feature “all-Ethernet” 5GLAN (Local Area Network), 5G-TSN (Time-Sensitive Networking), 5G-Multicast and intelligent vertical application orchestration features. The proposed framework enables highly customized cloud-native deployment of private 5G networks. FUDGE-5G will accelerate the (inevitable) shift to a fully software-based 5G core network by offering a disintegrated environment where components, both in control and user plane, can be deployed anywhere as micro-services (i.e., edge, on premises and cloud), being agnostic to the underlying infrastructure. This softwarization exposing 5G NR HW to third parties will enable the usage of off-the-shelf commodity HW to deliver additional cost savings, faster deployments and ultimately greater adoption for private networks. The consortium has been carefully built around several innovative high-tech small and medium European vendors for virtualized 5GC and service orchestration solutions and applications. They will be able to integrate, test and validate their 5G technical solutions over the premium end-to-end 5G NR facility provided by a major European MNO in several innovative use cases for private networks under real-life operational conditions with prominent vertical stakeholders. State-of-the-art eSBA capabilities will be offered by large vendors.

ADOPTION works toward the goal of proving a low power and low cost solution for intra-data centre networks employing co-packaging of the optical (CPO) transceivers with the packed switch chip. Hyperscale data centres are a fundamental and inextricable part of our digital society. However, data centre power consumption represents a huge global problem accounting for 1% of the global power consumption. Scaling the capacity of the current architectures for intra-data centre networks is also becoming more and more challenging due to the increasing power consumption of the electrical interconnects between electrical packet switches and pluggable optical transceivers. ADOPTION aims at addressing switch capacities scaling beyond 204.8Tb/s with port speeds of 6.4Tb/s by reducing the electrical interconnect lengths using silicon photonics CPO transceiver engines with high power efficiency targeting around 3pJ/bit. ADOPTION will also develop innovative packaging solutions using a two-part assembly separating the electrical and optical layers to simplify processes and increase yield. An advanced active optical alignment for fibre arrays will also be integrated in the assembly process with the aim of reducing assembly time and improving coupling efficiency. With these solutions ADOPTION is targeting the challenging goal of reducing the cost of the optical interfaces to below 50 cents per Gb/s. ADOPTION will also demonstrate disruptive new network architectures for hyper-scale data centres and AI computing clusters utilising optical switching and routing to increase efficiency and reduce latency. ADOPTION is aiming to create a new ecosystem of research and innovation, building on the complementary expertise of 3 SMEs, 3 large companies and 4 research institutions in the consortium, and to redefine the digital supply chain for CPO transceivers, fostering European competitiveness in this new value chain. To fulfil this vision, the consortium is asking for 5.8 M€.