EMPYREAN envisages a hyper-distributed computing paradigm, based on federations of collaborative and heterogeneous IoT devices and resources (e.g., on RISC-V) across different providers and networks. These federations, namely Associations, operate autonomously and interconnect seamlessly utilizing distributed, cognitive and dynamic AI-enabled decision-making, to balance computing tasks and data inside an Association as well as between Associations in a multi-agent manner and across central computing environments, optimizing resources and providing scalability, resiliency, energy efficiency and quality of service. An Association will constitute a trusted execution environment, while identity and data access management schemes will assure controlled access and confidentiality of data, utilizing Cluster 3 related outcomes from participating partners. EMPYREAN will also be empowered with automated tools and mechanisms for efficient data processing of AI-workloads and secure distributed edge storage. Developed technologies will also enable Associations-native application development and deployment, contributing to the entire application lifecycle and interoperability. EMPYREAN will provide open and standardized APIs, while utilizing and extending open-source platforms maintained by European companies from the consortium. EMPYREAN will demonstrate its advanced and innovative capabilities through three well-defined use cases that involve device- and data-rich applications in advanced manufacturing, smart agriculture and warehouse automation, involving AI-driven value extraction from high volume and dynamic IoT data generated by multiple sources (e.g., robots) at the edge of the network. Also, a South Korea based use case in smart factories will further showcase the benefits of the EMPYREANs technologies. EMPYREAN will develop its Association-based continuum through synergies with emerging IPCEI initiatives and EU bodies (e.g., GAIA-X, IDSA) by involved partners.

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.

UP2DATE4SDV has brought together automotive hardware manufacturers, the automotive software industry and SMEs, and the best-known researchers in the field to jointly create a comprehensive ecosystem for updatable, upgradable, and reconfigurable software-defined connected and automated vehicles. To this end, a middleware solution is to be created and integrated into the current automotive open source standards, which allows complete abstraction not only of the software running in the vehicle, but also of the installed hardware. As a result, not only can the software be continuously updated over the air over the lifetime of the vehicle and thus kept safe, secure, and up to date, but hardware components can also be easily replaced or supplemented to meet future requirements. To achieve this, we will additionally develop a new hardware component based on established automotive systems, which will be expanded in such a way that the unavoidable overhead resulting from the update capability of the systems is minimised thanks to explicit hardware support. The overall solution is suitable for the upcoming zonal E/E architectures that have a permanent connection to the cloud. The project therefore aims to develop and integrate methods that ensure the safety of the systems during an update by strictly separating all individual automotive applications in containers. In addition, a security layer will be introduced to prevent attacks via the cloud link or among the application modules. Finally, we want to make it easier for automotive software developers to use our middleware by establishing a reference layer based on a hypervisor that prevents the real-time requirements of different application modules from influencing each other. Communication to the vehicle components and to the cloud is abstracted and standardised. In addition, methods are provided to automate the V&V process for each further update, upgrade or reconfiguration and to ensure security at every step.

The success of Beyond 5G (B5G) systems will largely depend on the quality of the Network Intelligence (NI) that will fully automate network management. Artificial Intelligence (AI) models are commonly regarded as the cornerstone for NI design; indeed, AI models have proven extremely successful at solving hard problems that require inferring complex relationships from entangled and massive (e.g., traffic) data. However, AI is not the best solution for every NI task; and, when it is, the dominating trend of plugging ‘vanilla’ AI into network controllers and orchestrators is not a sensible choice. Departing from the current hype around AI, DAEMON will set forth a pragmatic approach to NI design. The project will carry out a systematic analysis of which NI tasks are appropriately solved with AI models, providing a solid set of guidelines for the use of machine learning in network functions. For those problems where AI is a suitable tool, DAEMON will design tailored AI models that respond to the specific needs of network functions, taking advantage of the most recent advances in machine learning. Building on these models, DAEMON will design an end-to-end NI-native architecture for B5G that fully coordinates NI-assisted functionalities. The advances to NI devised by DAEMON will be applied in practical network settings to: (i) deliver extremely high performance while making an efficient use of the underlying radio and computational resources; (ii) reduce the energy footprint of mobile networks; and (iii) provide extremely high reliability beyond that of 5G systems. To achieve this, DAEMON will design practical algorithms for eight concrete NI-assisted functionalities, carefully selected to achieve the objectives above. The performance of the DAEMON algorithms will be evaluated in real-world conditions via four experimental sites, and at scale with data-driven approaches based on two nationwide traffic measurement datasets, against nine ambitious yet feasible KPI targets.

Delivering on the 5G promise of increased data rates, and ubiquitous coverages, poses stringent requirements on traditional vertically integrated operators. In particular, telecom operators are expected to massively roll out Small Cells, which requires finding appropriate urban spaces with both backhaul and energy availability. Network sharing becomes essential to unlock those commercial massive deployments. The open access model, or neutral host, will come to play a key role on the deployment of 5G networks, especially in urban scenarios where very dense Small Cell deploymens are required. In parallel recent trends are paving the way towards the development of new, heterogeneous and distributed cloud paradigms that significantly differ from today’s established cloud model: with edge computing, cloud architectures are pushed all the way to the edge of the network, close to the devices that produce and act on data. We posit that there are two sets of players perfectly poised to take advantage of both trends since they already own the infrastructure needed to build edge deployments: telecommunication providers and municipalities. 5GCity focuses on how common smart city infrastructure (i.e.,small cells and processing power at the very edge of networks) can bring benefit to both players based on resource sharing and end-to-end virtualization, pushing the cloud model to the extreme edge. 5GCity will design, develop, deploy and demonstrate a distributed cloud and radio platform for municipalities and infrastructure owners acting as 5G neutral hosts. 5GCity’s main aim is to build and deploy a common, multi-tenant, open platform that extends the (centralized) cloud model to the extreme edge of the network, with a demonstration in three different cities (Barcelona, Bristol and Lucca). 5GCity will directly impact a large and varied range of actors: (i) telecom providers; (ii) municipalities; and (iii) a number of different vertical sectors utilizing the city infrastructure