Analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs) are the essential links between physical world in which all signals are 'analogue' (e.g., electric current generated by a microphone or a picture captured by a mobile phone camera) and the digital world of '0s' and '1s', where we store, transmit and process signals and information. ADCs enable (digital) computers to process signals from the (analogue) physical world. This capability has revolutionised our entire society, making computers (desk-tops, lap-tops, or smartphones) ubiquitous. In recent years, we have witnessed a dramatic increase of the amount of information that is generated, stored, transmitted, and processed, driven by increased demand of our society on data and information and newly emerging applications such as virtual and augmented reality. All this information needs to be processed by ADCs, which can address the abovementioned need only when performing with better accuracy, affordable power consumption, in real-time (with low latency), and for increasingly broader bandwidth (faster) signals. This is extremely challenging with currently-existing technologies and is being vigorously pursued by both academia and industry. Most of these approaches are based on strategies like the use of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), photonic time stretch, or time interleaving. Unfortunately, all of these approaches seem to have formidable challenges. A clearly realisable route to next-generation ADCs that could support information growth in the next decade and beyond is currently lacking. ORBITS aims to provide a radically novel and future-growth-proof solution to ADCs using optical assisted means. Specifically, it will exploit unique features of recently-emerged optical and photonics technologies, including optical frequency combs, coherent optical processing, and precise optical phase control. Optics offers three orders of magnitude larger bandwidth than microwave electronics used for ADCs today and has the advantages of ultrafast (femtosecond level) responses. The optical frequency comb technologies, in conjunction with coherent optical processing and phase control, enables dividing signal with high accuracy in the optical domain, which overcomes the fundamental limits such as timing jitter (time uncertainty) in conventional approaches, opening up a scalable and integratable technology for large bandwidth high resolution ADCs. For practical (low-cost when volume-manufactured, compact, and low-power-consuming) implementation, ORBITS will investigate optical and electronic integration, which permit to harness merits across different photonics integration platforms, through collaborations and open foundries. Besides next-generation ADCs, ORBITS will study applications in future-proof high capacity optical and wireless communications. It assembles complementary expertise from top research groups in Universities and companies, aiming for a wide academic impact and a straightforward knowledge transfer to industry.

In TeamUp5G we believe that motivation from involvement and engagement is key to learning. We want to place creative young researchers in front of the real world, enabling them to work on real-life technical issues, working across multiple European countries and organizations, presenting at workshops in front of industrial users/stakeholders, and becoming involved in standardization activities. We also want to provide them with communications skills, the ability to work in groups and an understanding of integrity and ethics in research. The project focus is ultra-dense small cell systems as an important component in future heterogeneous 5G networks (commercial deployment in 2020) and beyond. TeamUp5G considers aspects such as enhanced multi-antenna techniques, efficient backhaul/fronthaul, massive MIMO, communications in the millimetre-wave bands and visible light communications, as well as spectrum sharing and aggregation to enhance system capacity, decrease delay and energy consumption, and improve overall service quality. The research team of 15 young researches supervised by committed experts from the industry and academia will advance the state of the art with the design of novel physical/link/medium access control algorithms and protocols to enhance capacity and user satisfaction, new dynamic spectrum management, opportunistic optimisation of radio resources and cognitive radio techniques, together with self-organization capabilities, with different levels of collaboration, and techniques and methodologies to save energy. Both mobile broadband and internet of things applications and traffic will be harmonised. The new developed techniques will be analysed by simulation and prototyping and some show-cases (immersive video, drones) will be developed to illustrate the novelty and applicability of our ideas. The consortium will train the young researchers on how to contribute and will actively participate in the activities of standardization bodies.

The ongoing energy system digitization is making available an enormous amount of data, paving the way for data sharing-enabled cross-value chain services, which may contribute to system-level increased efficiency and hence facilitate the energy transition. However data sharing in the energy sector is lagging behind, mainly due to lack of trust, privacy breaches risk and business models immaturity. In that respect ENERSHARE will a) deliver a Reference Architecture for a European Energy Data Space, which hybridizes SGAM with IDSA and GAIA-X architectures, by bringing data value chain perspective into the energy one b) evolve interoperability, trust, data value and governance building blocks to TRL 6-7 IDSA-compliant ones, adapt them to energy sector, and deploy: 1) across-energy and cross-sector data enhancement technology enablers and standardizable interfaces and open APIs by leveraging on open Standards (e.g. ETSI Context Broker) and ontologies (e.g. SAREF 2) trust-related connectors, to ensure privacy, confidentiality, cybersecurity-preserving trust, sovereignty and full control of data 3) Blockchain/Smart contract-enriched marketplace for data versus energy assets/services coordination, sharing, exchange, and beyond financial compensation 4) cross-value chain value-added services and Digital Twins, by leveraging on privacy-preserving federated learning c) integrate and deploy them within a Reference Implementation of a European Energy Data Space, which will be demonstrated along 7 pilots and 11 intra-electricity, intra-energy and beyond energy use cases d) co-design SSH-based consumer-centric business models for energy data sharing enabling data beyond-financial value creation and spreading along value chain d) prepare the ground for the European Energy Data Space setup, through alignment with EU-level relevant initiatives (GAIA-X, IDSA, BDVA, ETIP SNET, BRIDGE), contributing to Data Space standardization and boosting a level playing field for data sharing.

We are at the “eve” of a fundamental transition in 5G, and the aspiration of 5G-EVE is to create the foundations for a pervasive roll-out of end-to-end 5G networks in Europe. 5G-EVE supports this fundamental transition by offering to vertical industries and to all 5GPPP Phase3 projects facilities to validate their network KPIs and their services. Important representatives of these vertical industries are directly involved as partners of 5G-EVE exactly to influence the design of the end-to-end 5G services, and to provide an early assessment. The 5G-EVE end-to-end facility consists of the interconnection of four 5G-site-facilities (France, Spain, Italy, Greece), which have been selected because of their considerable previous work with vertical industries and standardisation bodies, on top of their 5G technology competences. 5G-EVE aims at creating synergies between a significant number of facilities that will ensure sustainability and impact in terms of exploitation. The 5G-EVE facility will enable experiments with: (a) heterogeneous access, including NR, licensed/unlicensed spectrum, advanced spectrum management; (b) Mobile Edge Computing, backhaul, core/service technologies; (c) means for site-interworking and multi-site/domain/technology slicing/orchestration. 5G-EVE will be initially compliant with 3GPP Rel. 15 and, later on, with Rel. 16. Industrial verticals will be facilitated in the specification/analysis of experiments through: (a) intent-based, and other high-level, interfaces; (b) means for advanced 5G testing, i.e., for KPI analysis, technology benchmarking, performance diagnosis. A VNF pool, including open source and proprietary, radio/network/service, components will be developed and made available. 5G-EVE will impact standards, and has the potential and strategy for ensuring the sustainability of the facility beyond the project lifetime, therefore becoming a cornerstone of the 5G PPP programme and beyond.

During the last decades, supply chains have become huge networks of heterogeneous organisations involved in the manufacturing and delivery of products to end users. The appearance of IoT is transforming every sector subject to be digitalized. After a period of evaluation of the use of IoT, companies are now moving to complete digitalization of their supply chains. Under this paradigm, iNGENIOUS (Next-GENeration IoT sOlutions for the Universal Supply chain) will exploit some of the most innovative and emerging technologies in line with the standardised trend, contributing to the Next-Generation IoT (NG-IoT) and proposing technical and business enablers to build a complete platform for supply chain management. iNGENIOUS embraces the 5G Infrastructure Association (5G IA) and Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI) vision for empowering smart manufacturing and smart mobility verticals. The iNGENIOUS network layer brings new smart 5G-based IoT functi¬onalities, federated Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) nodes and smart orchestration, needed for enabling the projected real-time capable use cases of the supply chain. Security and data management are fully recognized as important features in the project. iNGENIOUS will create a holistic security architecture for next-generation IoT built on neuromorphic sensors with security governed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and tile-based hardware architectures based on security by design and isolation by default. In the application layer, iNGENIOUS new AI mechanisms will allow more precise predictions than conventional systems. Project outcomes will be validated into 4 large-scale Proof of Concept demonstration, covering 1 factory, 2 ports, and 1 ship, encompassing 6 uses cases. iNGENIOUS is formed by 21 partners from eight countries, including three telecom vendors and manufacturers, two network operators, four logistics partners, two universities, three research institutes and seven high-tech SMEs.