Newsflash June 2022_

Key takeaways from EuCNC 2022

The conference focused on various aspects of 5G and 6G communications systems and networks, including cloud and virtualisation solutions, management technologies, hardware components and microelectronic technologies, and vertical application areas. Research projects, from successive European RDI programmes such as Horizon 2020, could demonstrate results and main achievements.

It was a success: more than 30 European projects were gathered at the World Trend Center of Grenoble (France) to present results, progress and demos.

Among others,

• TERAWAY organised a Workshop on June 7 on “Photonic integration as a key enabling technology for 6G and beyond”.
• EMPOWER held a Workshop on “Empowering Transatlantic platforms for 5G Advanced and 6G networks”. The workshop was organized around the key questions to explore the collaboration between NSF (National Scientific Foundation) and the European Commission, in separate sessions.  The workshop was mainly driven by EU EMPOWER and NSF PAWR representatives.
• CORENect was very active.
  • The project organised a Policy Workshop on June 16 (Read more here).  The COREnect Policy Workshop brought together stakeholders from the microelectronics and connectivity domains, from public authorities as well as private organisations, to discuss the priorities and recommendations from the COREnect roadmap, and how to implement the concrete steps required to achieve European leadership in microelectronics and connectivity within the next ten years through a concrete action plan. The project proposes 23 concrete actionable recommendations and guidelines dealing with technological sovereignty in 5G and beyond:
    • Actions to be addressed at a political level
    • Focus on short term (<2026)
    • Focus on the medium term (2026-2030)
    • Focus on the long term (>2030)
  • CORENect also held a Workshop organised by Alexandros Kaloxylos (6G-IA) on June 7. Based on the initially identified COREnect end-to-end system view with a value chain consideration, COREnect has organised three Expert Groups (EGs) to address the three strategic focus areas within the industry roadmap:
    • Expert Group #1 Compute and Store
    • Expert Group #2 Connect and Communicate
    • Expert Group #3 Sense and Power

    The purpose of this workshop was to present the key findings of these EGs (i.e., a roadmap on how Europe should (re)act in this area) at a broad ICT audience. Moreover, after 2 years of intensive activities COREnect’s recommendations were presented. The feasibility of these recommendations were discussed by a panel of leading experts in the area.

• After a long hiatus, the Hexa-X project could finally be represented with in-person attendance at a major conference, by hosting a workshop, an exhibition booth and a special session. The workshop “The 6G workshop series by Hexa-X” presented results from the Hexa-X project on 6G vision, Radio performance, Connecting intelligence, and Network evolution and expansion with invited industrial presentations from Nokia and Ericsson as well as invited presentations from other 5G PPP projects such as REINDEER, TeraFlow, 6G BRAINS, and 5G-Clarity. For more information, check out the workshop program and presentations here.  The Hexa-X exhibition booth presented a live demo of interactive cobots courtesy of Hexa-X partner WINGS ICT Solutions.
• Vital-5G, a 5G PPP phase 3 Part 6 ICT-41 2020 presented the paper “Network Applications (NetApps) as a 5G booster for T&L Services: The VITAL-5G approach”.
• Many projects had a booth where interesting discussions and exciting demos took place:
  • Elements from the DEDICAT 6G use cases were showcased and demonstrated including robots and AR applications for Smart Warehousing, AIRBUS Mission Critical application for Public Safety, OPTINVENT Smart glasses for Enhanced Experience and Smart Highway.
  • 6G-BRAINS presented different materials at its booth: 1) Two posters presentation on 6G BRAINS industry use cases and technology 2) A video presentation of 6G BRAINS project 3) Testbed video presentation on mmWave uplink test and indoor visible light positioning testbed. RunEL’s MWC demonstration will be also available, and which describes RunEL’s 5G solution for Sports Stadiums that consist of a complete self-contained on site network that combines a 5G URLLC system with the capability to measure the location of 5G User terminal end devices and sensors with 1 cm accuracy.
  • The AI@EDGE consortium has met face-to-face for a productive technical plenary meeting in Grenoble
  • DAEMON presented various demos. See more here.
  • MON B5G demonstrated novel autonomic management and orchestration framework of MonB5G, heavily leveraging the distribution of operations together with state-of-the-art data-driven AI- based mechanisms. More specifically, two main demos namely PoC-1 Zero-Touch Network and service management with end-to-end SLAs​ and PoC-2 AI-assisted policy-driven security monitoring & enforcement​ were demonstrated to show the scalability and security implementation solutions of network slicing, management and orchestration of telecommunication networks in the field of 5G.
  • The Hexa-X exhibition booth presented a live demo of interactive cobots courtesy of Hexa-X partner WINGS ICT Solutions as well as showcasing the project’s new overview video as well as posters and flyers.
  • ICT-53 projects, 5GMED, 5G-Blueprint, and 5G-Routes were present together at the same booth. The projects presented their activities and progress to the event’s audience comprised of academics, policymakers, and industrial stakeholders (e.g., mobile network operators). Francisco Váquez Gallego, 5GMED technical manager at I2CAT highlighted the importance of the collaboration with projects of ICT-18 to acknowledge their experiences and with the ICT-53 to share common challenges. Philippe Veyssière, from IRT-Saint Exupéry, presented the poster “5GMED Connected and Automated Mobility and Future Railway Mobile Communication Use Cases in the Mediterranean Cross-Border Corridor”. For more information, have a look here.
  • FUDGE-5G and Affordable5G had a joint booth.
    • The FUDGE-5G demonstration focused on its SBA platform, which implements the Service Communication Proxy and offers cloud-native location-aware orchestration of 5G Cores. Utilising the SBA capabilities, the first part of the demonstration allows to deploy 5GC on-premise and have it operational with a gNB within two minutes. This is then mixed with a hybrid deployment where the UPF is located on premise and all other required 5GC NFs in the cloud. The third deployment, instead, has the entire 5GC in the cloud. All on-premise deployments utilise the same SBA platform. For all three deployments, a Vertical Health Monitoring application was orchestrated on-premise allowing to demonstrate the functional readiness of all 5GCs.
    • Affordable5G showcased its latest project outcomes and developments in its quest to create a high-tech and affordable 5G network roll-out spanning across several fields. At the booth, video presentations and other informational material was available to visitors, and the research partners presented a paper entitled “Towards Closed-loop Automation in 5G Open RAN: Coupling an Open-Source Simulator with xApp” on June 9.
  • 5GMediaHUB and MARSAL showcased a demo.
  • 5G EPICENTRE had a booth which showed its open experimentation 5G platform for PPDR applications, based on service oriented architecture and containerization of micro-services.
  • 5G-MOBIX, 5GCARMEN and 5GCroco has three distinct booths.
    • The 5G-MOBIX exhibition booth promoted the project and its use cases/user stories and show videos of past demonstrations at different trial sites (the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, etc.) on the booth’s screen. The exhibition booth also served as an opportunity to inform stakeholders (and the general public) of the possibility to visit the project’s static vehicle (FORD truck) outside the venue for a tour, explaining the different functions, sensors, OBUs, etc.
    • 5G-CARMEN presented the key findings and results collected through live pilots performed along the highway corridor connecting Bologna to Munich, with focus on activities performed at the borders between Italy and Austria, and Austria and Germany.
    • 5GCroco visitors could control a virtual vehicle (by means of a game controller) that can interact with other cars and experience the ACCA real-time warning system. Live demonstration of the end-to-end MANO service orchestration for the provisioning a cross-border ACCA service were organised. A separate screen showcased the 5G KPI evolution from real cross border scenarios and the results of the experiments comparing UWB Precise Positioning and GPS-RTK.
  • 5GZORRO proposed demonstrations aiming at showcasing several capabilities in support of a telecom martkeplace for trading and acquiring multi-provider 5G product offers, with smart contracts based on DLTs, and AI operations through cross-domain zero-touch service, network and security management.
  • 5G-SOLUTIONS presented several demonstrations, both on site and remotely connected. One of the main topics was the demonstration of the use case devoted to Ultra High-Fidelity (UHF) Media which addresses the full set of the 5G-SOLUTIONS enables, CDSO, ZTA, VS and supports VNF, Open Slice, etc. as well. In any case, in the booth there were demos across all the 4 living labs (Industry 4.0, Smart Energy, Smart Cities and Ports, Media and Entertainment) as well as a multi-living lab where multiple experiments shared concurrently the same platform is considered. A short video presenting the demand side management use cases in Vertical Smart Energy and explaining motivations and logic was displayed.
  • 5G COMPLETE showcased a video of a demo showing Interoperability in spawning containers, VMs, and unikernels on 5G-COMPLETE’s MEC systems software stack. This video shows the spawn of simple containers servicing a static HTML page on diverse nodes (x86 & aarch64). Additionally, it contains the early integration of hardware acceleration functionality in serverless computing via an image classification operation running as an OpenFaaS function on the 5G-COMPLETE systems software stack.
  • 5G-VICTORI showed how open and multi-technology 5G infrastructures can be exploited in support of vertical industry requirements and services offering a suitable environment not only in support of service delivery, but also of sharing required resources and functions in a controlled and secure framework.
  • 5G-TOURS brought posters, videos and demonstrations for the use cases in the tourism, the health and the transportation sectors. Mr. Pearse O’Donohue, Chair of the conference and Director Future Networks at the European Commission, visites the stand and saw use cases, starting from the itinerant orchestra and the R1 robot guide-assistance (tourism sector), the airport evacuation and smart parking (transport sector) and the remote assistance (health sector).
  • The 5G!Drones Project consortium showcased and demonstrated various scenarios of how 5G technology can leverage UAV operations. Some of the demonstrations included: BVLOS medical delivery over 5G network, use of UAVs & 5G technology for search and rescue operations, Airbus Mission Critical Systems over 5G, and we will also show how the KPIs for 5G can be applicable to UAV industry.
  • ARIADNE showcased a demonstration based on a combination of tools including a data science platform owned by RapidMiner, commercially available mathematical tools and open platforms for ML training.
• TeraFlow hosted a Special session on “Redesigning Transport Networks for 6G: From the cell site to the core” on June 7 and participated in the Workshop 2, “The 6G workshop series by Hexa-X” on June 8. On its booth, it showcased a first proof-of-concept of a B5G-ready cloud-native SDN controller that integrates with NFV framework, and real and emulated equipment, all using standardized interfaces.
• On its booth, 5G-HEART showed main results and achievements from vertical validation trials on top of all three ICT-17 facilities (5G-VINNI, 5G-EVE and 5Genesis) and two national 5G test platforms (5GTN and 5Groningen) with use cases from three different vertical domains: healthcare, transport and aquaculture.
• 5G-CLARITY showed main results and outcomes. The demo considers 5GNR, WiFi-6, and LIFI technologies integration into a 5G-CLARITY CPE designed to be placed in mobile devices requiring high bandwidth and resiliency while navigating through public and private networks.
• The Smart5Grid Project participated in the Special Session on ‘NetApps for Verticals’. This hybrid event was co-organised by ICT-41 projects including Smart5Grid and took place on Wednesday 8th June. Rita Santiago and Helio Simeao, from Ubiwhere, physically attended the event and along with the 4 Smart5Grid Pilots, presented the Smart5Grid NetApp Concept and the overall ecosystem picture by introducing the Smart5Grid Platform. The Special Session was chaired by Bessem Sayadi (Nokia Bell-Labs France, 5G-PPP Software Network WG Chairman, FR) and by Christos Tranoris (University of Patras, GR). For more information about the Special Session click here:https://www.eucnc.eu/programme/special-sessions/special-session-10/
• The 5GMediaHUB Project showed a demo on its booth. The demo included a large number of elements such as a user generated content scenario and a rendering of the 5GMediaHUB 360 VR NetApp, showcasing a remote teacher in a virtual classroom, among others. 5GMediaHUB also presented during a special session titled “NetApps for Verticals” on June 8.
• 5G-IANA was present at this EuCNC edition, in collaboration with 5GASP project. Nextworks introduced the Connected and Automated Mobility during the Special Session 10 “Netapps for Verticals”, where 5G-IANA Use Cases were presented, providing insights about the major challenges in orchestrating NetApps with different purposes (e.g., infotainment, manoeuvres coordination etc.) for the Automotive Industry. This session took place on  June 8 focused on discussing how NetApp empowers the verticals on-boarding on 5G. It brought together all the NetApp stakeholders and paved the way for NetApps into 6G to span all domains RAN/CORE/Transport/Devices/Applications.

The Beyond 5G and European 6G Initiative

Research on 5G continues and research on 6G has already started in Europe. Peter Stuckmann, Head of Unit, Future Connectivity Systems and Interim Executive Director, Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking, DG CONNECT, presented the B5G/6G Initiative at EuCNC 2022 on June 10.

Peter Stuckmann presented the global 5G and 6G context and compared the 6G Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking with initiatives from advanced wireless markets:

In the USA, four major initiatives have been launched:

• • The “Secure 5G & Beyond Act of 2020” was signed into Law in March 2020. It requires developing a strategy to ensure the security of next generation systems and infrastructure in the US. In addition, the White House published its “National strategy to 5G” in a dedicated paper. The goals are to facilitate 5G roll-out, promote global development and deployment of 5G and promote secure and reliable 5G networks by analysing potential risks to economic and national security and ensuring critical functions are sufficiently structured
  •  The DoD launched its 600 million USD-funded Testbed Programme in October 2020. 5G is experimented and tested at five US military test sites (Hill Air Force Base, Utah; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia; Naval Base San Diego, California; and Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada). AT&T, GE Research, Nokia contribute to this project.
  • The industry pushed the Next-G Alliance to advance US technology leadership through private-sector-led efforts
  • The OpenRAN alliance was also launched with the mission to reshape RANs to be more intelligent, open, virtualised and fully interoperable.

The roadmap towards 6G was released in Japan as early as June 2020. In South Korea, the MSIT created the 6G programme in September 2020 with 200 million USD of public support. In China, the MIIT elaborated its 6G programme and created the IMT-2030 Promotion Committee.

Europe started to implement a flagship system project in January 2021 with eight 6G exploratory projects under the  60 million EUR 5G PPP ICT-52 call. HEXA-X, RISE-6G, REINDEER, 6G BRAINS, AI@EDGE, DAEMON, MARSAL, DEDICAT 6G, TERAFLOW are the 6G-related 5G PPP phase 3 Part 6. projects.

The 2021-2022 period benefits from a 240 million EUR budget under the Work Programme dealing with 5G Evolution (stream A on Smart Communication components, systems and networks for 5G mid-term Evolution systems, stream D: Large scale SNS trials and Pilots with Verticals) and 6G (stream B on Research for radical technology advancements towards 6G, stream C on SNS experimental infrastructures) issues.

The Smart Connectivity Digital Innovation Hub Network monthly activity report

• Cooperation with African DIHs together with the 5 ICT58 projects funded under the Horizon 2020 program. A MoU is circulated among the projects in order to facilitate cooperation. A webinar will be organised after the summer with a specific focus on Smart Connectivity
• Cooperation with the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) in order to promote 5GPPP project results and facilitate replicability at regional level. A MoU is circulated, EISMA agency has proposed to include also the Thematic Group Digitalization.
• Cooperation with the DIH4AI network which is similar to SCoDIHNet but targeting the AI and data domains.
• Results of the Digital Europe Calls are available, 37 EDIH among the 46 participants succeed and will get funds for operation.
• Mapping the Smart Connectivity Technology providers (SMEs) with the DIHs in order to facilitate cooperation at regional level.

AIOTI Webinar
July 13 @15:00-16:30

 AIOTI online presentation of the device-centric IoT Security Risk Spectra Mapping Tool
July 14 @15:00-17:00

SLICES-SC Summer School
July 19-21 @07:00-17:00

Call for Demos
Electra Hotel Athens, September 5-8

9th Global 5G Event

Tokyo, Japan – September 20-21

CfP Smart5Grid@IEEE International Smart Cities Conference

Paphos, Cyprus – September 26-29

AIOTI Signature Event: Societal Impact and Opportunities for the Green Digital Twin Transition
Brussels, Belgium  – September 27 @08:00-17:00 CEST

CfP Next Generation networking and Internet @ The 5G IEEE Future Networks World Forum
Brussels, Belgium  – October 12-15 @08:00-17:00 CEST

8th IEEE World Forum IoT – ASSIST-IoT CfP

Yokohama, Japan  – October 26-November 11

IEEE Global Communication Conference: Accelerating the Digital Transformation through Smart Communications

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil  – December 4-8