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.

With the fast development of electronic devices and computing technologies, various emerging applications (e.g., big data analysis, artificial intelligence and 3-dimensional (3D) media, Internet of things, etc.) have been entering our society with significant amounts of data traffic. While mobile networks are already indispensable to our society for “anywhere anytime connection,” one main characteristic of future mobile networks (i.e., B5G: Beyond 5G) is the very huge amount of data, which requires very high throughput per devices (multiple Gbps, up to Tera bps: Tbps) and multiple Tbps per area efficiency (Tbps/km2). Though some disrupting 5G technologies may provide a few Gbps service, it is still not able to achieve hundreds of Gbps or Tbps rates. In the near future, the peak rate of mobile communication networks is expected to reach hundreds of Gbps or even Tbps rates, which requires either very high spectrum efficiency (e.g., much higher than 10 bits/s/Hz) in millimetre wave bands or very large bandwidth (e.g., more than 20GHz) . While the former is very challenging, the latter can be achieved in THz bands (roughly, 100GHz to 10THz). The design of ubiquitous access with very high rates in mobile and heterogeneous network (HetNet) environments is the key to the development of future mobile networks, and so the objective of this collaborative 6G-TERAFIT is to create a knowledge transfer between the researchers and the engineers who will contribute to the design and implementation of future B5G ultra-fast networks and create the pedestal for them to become potential leaders in the resulting scientific, technological, and industrial fields. This project is committed to creating an “excellent” educational training platform that is multi-disciplinary and inter-sectoral in nature.

The Quantum Secure Networks Partnership (QSNP) project aims at creating a sustainable European ecosystem in quantum cryptography and communication. A majority of its partners, which include world-leading academic groups, research and technology organizations (RTOs), quantum component and system spin-offs, cybersecurity providers, integrators, and telecommunication operators, were members of the European Quantum Flagship projects CIVIQ, UNIQORN and QRANGE. QSNP thus gathers the know-how and expertise from all technology development phases, ranging from innovative designs to development of prototypes for field trials. QSNP is structured around three main Science and Technology (ST) pillars. The first two pillars, “Next Generation Protocols” and “Integration”, focus on frontier research and innovation, led mostly by academic partners and RTOs. The third ST pillar “Use cases and Applications” aims at expanding the industrial and economic impact of QSN technologies and is mostly driven by companies. In order to achieve the specific objectives within each pillar and ensure that know-how transfer and synergy between them are coherent and effective, QSNP has established ST activities corresponding to the three main layers of the technology value chain, “Components and Systems”, “Networks” and “Cryptography and Security”. This framework will allow achieving the ultimate objective of developing quantum communication technology for critical European infrastructures, such as EuroQCI, as well as for the private information and communication technology (ICT) sectors. QSNP will contribute to the European sovereignty in quantum technology for cybersecurity. Additionally, it will generate significant economic benefits to the whole society, including training new generations of scientists and engineers, as well as creating high-tech jobs in the rapidly growing quantum industry.

SECRET is a collaborative European Training Network (ETN) committed to create an “excellent” educational training platform; that is multi-disciplinary and intersectoral in nature, for Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in the field of wireless communications and networking. In this dynamic field, the challenges are always evolving and more stringent in line with market expectation, and socio-economical requirements. The chapter of 4G (4th Generation) of mobile systems is finally coming to an end, with waves of 4G systems deployed over Europe and worldwide. 4G systems provide a universal platform for broadband mobile services at any time, any place and anywhere. However, mobile traffic is still growing at an unprecedented rate and the need for more sophisticated broadband services is still further pushing the limits on current standards to provide even tighter integration between wireless technologies and higher speeds. The increase in number of mobile devices and traffic, the change in the nature of service and device, along with the pressure on operation and capital costs, and energy efficiency are all continuously putting stringent limits on the requirement of the design of mobile networks. It is widely accepted that incremental enhancements of current networking paradigm will not achieve or come close to meeting the requirements of networking by 2020 . This has led to the need of a new generation of mobile communications: the so-called 5G. The interests of stakeholders and academic researchers are now focused on 5G paradigm. Although 5G systems are not expected to penetrate the market till 2020, the evolution towards 5G is widely accepted to be the convergence of internet services with existing mobile networking standards leading to the commonly used term “mobile internet” over heterogeneous networks (HetNets), with very high connectivity speeds. This proposal aims to narrow the gap between current networking technologies and the foreseen requirements of future 2