Nowadays there is a shared vision among industry, operators and academy that beyond 5G wireless networks will have to provide wideband wireless access and ubiquitous computing anywhere and at any time. The human life of the majority of the EU citizen will be surrounded by intelligent wireless sensors, which will bring radical changes to the way we live and do things. Supporting this scenario is a challenge for network operators and wireless network infrastructures and it will demand a tremendous performance improvement of medium range wireless infrastructure. This challenge needs to be addressed by a convergence of advanced semiconductor nanotechnology and a robust wireless infrastructure meshed network with seamless fiber performances. The DREAM project, through the exploitation of the radio spectrum in D-band (130-174.8 GHz) with beam steering functionality, will enable wireless links with data rate exceeding current V-band and E-band wireless backhaul solutions by at least a factor of 10 and thus, it will bring wireless systems to the speed of optical systems. The DREAM project vision and objectives rely on a power efficient and silicon based BiCMOS transceiver analog front end, operating in D-band and enabling cost efficient deployment of meshed networks with seamless fiber performance. A beam steering integrated antenna array using an intelligent low-cost packaging technology prototype will be developed for the implementation of the beyond 5G network proof of concept in a realistic environment. The DREAM consortium has a well-balanced and complementary known-how in the relevant areas for designing and demonstrating the feasibility of a small cell cellular network architecture based on meshed D-band backhaul links. DREAM will therefore secure Europe’s industrial leadership and pave the way towards the beyond 5G telecommunications networks.

Graph-X aims at the development of a novel hardware platform based on graphene photonic integrated circuits for ultra-high speed and scalable sub-THz D- (110-170 GHz) and H-band (170-240 GHz) wireless links. The proposed technology will be the basic building block for high-speed radio back haul links, multi beam forming antennas for massive MIMO, short distance high resolution RADAR sensing. GraPh-X targets the distribution and detection of multi Gbit/s radio signals over sub-THz tunable carrier frequencies. The main outcome of GraPh-X will be a monolithic electronic and photonic chip (EPIC) that will constitute the basic building block of a completely new class of photonic/electronic antenna arrays for the next generation sub-THz communication and RADAR systems. The proposed approach will allow to overcome the technical bottlenecks of current sub-THz technology, such as increasing detrimental effect of phase noise at higher carrier frequencies, and carrier frequency stability. To reach the goal, the wafer scale graphene photonic technology is needed and must go beyond the state of the art. A new technique (HMG-Stack technology) will be developed to allow multi-stacking of graphene layers maintaining the same properties of single layer graphene. The key component of GraPh-X is a novel optoelectronic efficient frequency mixer able to mix two optical wavelengths and a high data rate electrical signal. The photonic chip will be realized using a SiN photonic platform that will integrate HMG-Stack as active material. The monolithic integration of the graphene photonic mixer with SiGe BiCMOS electronics for mmWave amplification will enable high output power and reduced footprint (<500x500µm2), matching the requirements of a single element of mmWave antenna array system.

Optical communications are becoming always more relevant because of the continuous growth of the requiested bandwidth. In the last decade we assisted a continuous growing of transport and metro netwotks, presently the bottleneck is in the processing of the huge amount of data constituted by the growing number of users, the capacity of the content that is exchanged and the convergence of Telecom and Datacom. This accumulation of data are elaborated and redirected within data centers with a continuous growing of traffic congestion. The continuous growth of traffic require therefore a roadmap of bandwidth density growth that necessarily has to be scalable on the timeframe of several years. To this point photonics plays a crucial role that is always more pervasive. However a major limiting factor is also arising from the energy cost and latency accumulated by the need of aggregation to route signals. To limitate this effect is necessary to make possible data exchange and processing without or with limited aggregation. Teraboard project consists in developing a full intra data center photonic platform for intraboard, intrarack and intra data center optical communications. The Teraboard interconnection platform will be based on ultra-high density and scalable bandwidth optical interconnectivity with low insertion loss and a target of lowest energy cost per channel of 2.5pJ/bit and a manufacturing cost of 0.1$/Gb/s in volumes. These target values are 10x reduction respect to commercial state of the art. Teraboard demonstrates: 1) passive, scalable, 3D inter processor interconnection layer, 2) novel WDM optical connector to plug the fiber ribbons directly onto the transceiver chip, 3) intraboard transceiver bank with high density bandwidth of 7Tb/s/cm2. Single wavelength laser arrays will be directly integrated on the silicon photonics transceiver circuits, 4) and edge single and four wavelength transceiver interface with bandwidth density of 50 and 7Tb/s/cm2 respectively.

Nowadays there is a shared vision among industry, operators and academy that 5G wireless networks will have to provide wideband wireless access and ubiquitous computing anywhere and at any time. The human life of the majority of the EU citizens will be surrounded by intelligent wireless sensors, which will bring radical changes to the way we live and do things. Supporting this scenario is a challenge for network operators and wireless network infrastructures and it will demand a tremendous performance improvement of medium range wireless infrastructure. This challenge needs to be addressed by a convergence of advanced semiconductor nanotechnology and a robust wireless infrastructure based on meshed networks with seamless fiber performances. The DRAGON project, through the exploitation of the radio spectrum in D-band (130-174.8 GHz) , will overcome the constraints of current E-band wireless backhaul solutions to achieve a small-form factor and high-capacity radio solution, suitable for massive deployment, that will enable bringing the speed of optical systems to backhaul systems in a cost effective way. The DRAGON project vision and objectives rely on a power efficient and silicon based BiCMOS transceiver analog front end, operating in D-band and enabling cost efficient deployment of telecommunications networks with seamless fiber performance. A beam steering integrated antenna array using an intelligent low-cost packaging technology will be developed for the implementation of the 5G network demo trial on field, with fine beam alignment for facilitating the installation and compensating pole vibration. The DRAGON consortium has a well-balanced and complementary know-how in the relevant areas for designing and demonstrating the feasibility of a small cell cellular network architecture based on meshed D-band backhaul links. DRAGON will therefore secure Europe’s industrial leadership and pave the way towards innovative 5G telecommunications networks.

photonixFAB brings together key European photonics and semiconductor players, to establish a strong and sovereign European supply chain for silicon photonics. The consortium leverages the volume capacity of X-FAB, the European More-than-Moore foundry, and addresses the work program with six key objectives: (1) Transferring IMEC's world-renowned silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform to X-FAB, to achieve industrial manufacturing capacity. The SOI platform addresses a variety of high-speed and sensing applications. (2) Extending the industrial manufacturing capability of LIGENTEC's silicon nitride (SiN) technology at X-FAB, to become the industry standard for SiN photonics. The low-loss, and broad transparency of SiN are perfect for sensing, quantum computing, amongst others. (3) Increasing maturity of heterogeneous integration with SMART Photonics' Indium Phosphide (InP) active components such as lasers, modulators and detectors. These components are integrated on top of the SOI and SiN platforms by transfer-printing. This is an X-FAB associated technology, forming a key innovation differentiator for photonixFAB. The leading European RTOs, IMEC and CEA, are supporting photonixFAB with various technologies, developed in Horizon Europe activities, such as prototype transfer-printing, LiNbO3 modulators and Ge detectors on SiN. (4) Strengthening the European ecosystem with design automation (Luceda), innovative packaging solutions (PHIX), and increased testing capabilities. (5) Demonstrating the viability of the new supply chain and technologies through six application-oriented demonstrators in a wide array of markets. (6) Setting up pilot line and multi-project wafer access to serve innovation by start-ups, SMEs and large entities, and opening photonixFAB for direct feedback on competitiveness and capabilities. Thereby the relationships between the supply chain partners and prospective end-users, as well as between the photonics and the ECS worlds will be strengthened.