EMPOWER ambitions to accelerate the joint development between the EU and the US on advanced wireless platforms targeting the new connectivity frontiers beyond 5G. EMPOWER targets the creation of a joint EU-US advanced wireless ecosystem for (i) bridging the relevant EU-US Wireless communities and stakeholders, such as scientific researchers, platform engineers, standardization experts, regulators, and product incubators; and (ii) developing a strategic EU-US collaboration agenda and supporting its execution ahead of worldwide competition for beyond 5G connectivity standards. EMPOWER foresees twinning with the best researchers and practitioners involved in projects funded by USA, especially with entities participating in the PAWR programme (https://www.advancedwireless.org/). EMPOWER will provide instruments for inducing collaboration between ongoing and forthcoming 5G and beyond initiatives targeting at wireless networks experimentation on both ends of the Atlantic. Through the EMPOWER instruments we aim to create an efficient means for stimulating the circulation of ideas and people between European and similar American experimental wireless platform initiatives. We also aim at encouraging stronger collaboration between fundamental and experimental wireless researchers by making access to platform tools and data exchange simpler. EMPOWER instruments will also provide a wealth of information for global and regional standards and regulatory organizations (e.g. ITU-R, ETSI) and industry fora (e.g. NGMN). An important additional output of EMPOWER will be in the form of recommendations on technologies and experimentation methodologies for future wireless experimentation objectives. This will assist in providing coordination between EU (Horizon Europe) and US NSF programmes for future individual and joint calls.

Abstract: 5G-DIVE targets end-to-end 5G trials aimed at proving the technical merits and business value proposition of 5G technologies in two vertical pilots, namely (i) Industry 4.0 and (ii) Autonomous Drone Scout. These trials will put in action a bespoke end-to-end 5G design tailored to the requirements of the applications targeted in each vertical pilot, such as digital twinning and drone fleet navigation applications. 5G-DIVE’s bespoke design is built around two main pillars, namely (1) end-to-end 5G connectivity including 5G New Radio, Crosshaul transport and 5G Core, and (2) distributed edge and fog computing integrating intelligence located closely to the user. The latter pillar extends significantly beyond the EU- TW-Phase-I 5G-CORAL solution framework by adding support for automation based on artificial intelligence and distributed ledger technologies. The targeted intelligent tailored design is envisioned to achieve optimized performance and thus boost significantly the business value proposition of 5G in each targeted vertical application. 5G-DIVE trials target pilots running for several weeks on the premises of the vertical applications in real-life testbeds in Europe and Taiwan, leveraging noticeably the European 5G end- to-end facilities from ICT-17 call and Taiwan’s testbed facilities.

The Future Media Internet (FMI) will be driven by evolving existing over-the-top (OTT) solutions towards a stronger integration with emerging programmable communication and computing infrastructures to address consumer demand for personalised, interactive, mobile and localised media experiences. Creating a trusted platform that brings together technology, creative sectors and consumers in the development of pioneering media applications and services will be crucial to drive European innovation and competitiveness. FLAME will address this goal by establishing an FMI ecosystem based on the largescale experimentation of novel FMI products and services using real-life adaptive experimental infrastructures encompassing not only the compute and storage facilities but also the underlying software-enabled communication infrastructure. FLAME’s ecosystem will engage both the creative industries (broadcast, gaming, etc.) and ICT industries (telcos, services) responsible for online distribution, broadcast, communication, and distribution of digital content. Through acceleration methodologies and an advanced experimentation platform (surrogate service management, adaptive service routing, experimental media service chains and experimentation toolbox), FLAME will allow industry, SMEs and entrepreneurs to conduct experiments in real-life experimental infrastructures and gain insight into the performance, acceptance and viability of solutions. FLAME’s innovation potential will be maximised by establishing FLAME Trailblazers (Bristol, Barcelona) to show the way for FLAME Replicators across Europe using a replication process based on best practice sustainability, governance, and engagement models, and infrastructure standards and specifications. A 3rd party investment strategy will create a vibrant FMI ecosystem that adds significant value to current FIRE+ efforts, and puts in place measures for long term sustainability.

The vision of the 5Growth project is to empower verticals industries such as Industry 4.0, Transportation, and Energy with an AI-driven Automated and Sharable 5G End-to-End Solution that will allow these industries to achieve simultaneously their respective key performance targets. Towards this vision, 5Growth will automate the process for supporting diverse industry verticals through (i) a vertical portal in charge of interfacing verticals with the 5G End-to-End platforms, receiving their service requests and building the respective network slices on top, (ii) closed-loop automation and SLA control for vertical services lifecycle management and (iii) AI-driven end-to-end network solutions to jointly optimize Access, Transport, Core and Cloud, Edge and Fog resources, across multiple technologies and domains. The main objective of 5Growth is the technical and business validation of 5G technologies from the verticals’ points of view, following a field-trial-based approach on vertical sites (TRL 6-7). Multiple use cases of vertical industries (Comau, Efacec_S, Efacec_E, Innovalia) will be field-trialed on four vertical-owned sites in close collaboration with the vendors (Ericsson, Interdigital, NEC, Nokia) and the operators (Altice, Telecom Italia, Telefonica) in the project. 5Growth will leverage on the results of 5G-PPP Phase 2 projects where slicing, virtualization and multi-domain solutions for the creation and provisioning of vertical services are being developed and validated, e.g. 5G-TRANSFORMER and 5G-MONARCH. Two ICT-17-2018 5G End-to-End platforms, 5G EVE and 5G-VINNI, have been selected for the Trials to demonstrate the 5Growth specific vertical use cases. In addition to the impact on vertical-oriented standards (e.g., EN50126 (IEC62278) for railway signaling), the verticals in the consortium will be offered an opportunity to influence ongoing 5G standardization by leveraging the involvement of leading experts in the various relevant SDOs.