SNS JU Call 1 2022

Project Mission

The proposed concept of full-fledged integration of the NTN component into 6G leverages multiple key project outcomes that will pave the way for a service roll-out in the 2030-35 time frame:
– architecture-software defined payload adapted to all flying platforms and all frequency bands
– a very low Earth orbiting space segment
– a flexible waveform supporting terrestrial and non-terrestrial deployments.
– the support of smartphones and vehicle/drone-mounted terminals
– the use of new spectrum (i.e. C and Q/V bands) in coexistence with the terrestrial network component
– high accuracy and reliable positioning solutions.
By pulling together leading players across all involved industrial, research and innovation areas, the 6G-NTN ambition is to become the flagship R&I project to define the 6G NTN component and to drive its standardisation in 3GPP.

Contact Details

Website: https://www.6g-ntn.eu/     Social Media:  

Project Coordinator: Alessandro Vanelli-Coralli, University of Bologna

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

The 6G-SHINE project will pioneer the main technology components for in-X wireless subnetworks, short-range low-power radio cells to be installed in a wide set of vertical and consumer entities like robots, vehicles, production modules, and classrooms, for the sake of supporting extreme communication requirements in terms of latency, reliability, or data rates. 6G-SHINE will leverage the opportunities offered by the peculiar deployment characteristics of such short-range subnetworks for a highly performant yet cost-efficient radio design that allows bringing wireless connectivity to a level of pervasiveness which has never been experienced before. 6G-SHINE copes with the topics “New IoT components and devices” and “New physical layers and associated protocols” of strand B-01-03 in the SNS work programme.
The research will span the physical layer, medium access control protocols, radio resource management of these in-X subnetworks, as well as connection with a broader 6G ‘network of networks. The performance of the designed solutions will be analysed via simulations, and -for selected technologies- over demonstrator platforms. The project will result in a broad set of technology solutions that will be disseminated via scientific publications. Also, the designed solutions will be brought to future 6G standardisation and will be used in future telecommunication equipment and networks. The consortium consists of 12 partners that together bring essential expertise to each of the identified technologies, with a mixture of academic institutions and industry players with a strong research department, representing the essential parts of the value chain of wireless short-range communications.

Contact Details

Website: https://6gshine.eu/      Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Gilberto Berardinelli, Aalborg University

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

The 6GTandem project will demonstrate ultra-high-capacity coverage, offload of lower frequency bands and new services such as sub-cm resolution sensing and positioning in high-traffic areas by adding sub-THz carriers to lower frequency bands in a seamless, tightly coordinated fashion. The two frequency bands will form a network collaborating and supporting each other in a “tandem” configuration enabling an introduction of high-capacity, energy-efficient, sub-THz-enabled services while mitigating known drawbacks of the sub-THz frequency bands, such as susceptibility to line-of-sight blockage, coverage, and cost. The deployment will be addressed through the introduction of a thin and light dielectric waveguide to distribute a sub-THz RF signal through a daisy chain of integrated low-power antenna units referred to as a “radio stripe”. We will demonstrate the use of lower, sub-10 GHz frequency bands to support the sub-THz band with resilience and coverage and the implementation of a distributed MIMO system to extend the coverage of the sub-THz band, as well as offering capacities in the order of Tbps system throughput. We will demonstrate the possibility of implementing local fronthaul solutions for added sub-10GHz access points using the high bandwidth of sub-THz radio stripes.
Key elements for
– 6GATsaynstdeemm: defining an ‘aligned tandem’ dual-frequency distributed MIMO architecture
– Medium-aware waveforms, transmission schemes and communication strategies for energy-efficient operation and development of cross-layer solutions to offer required service levels on the novel dual-frequency infrastructure
– Novel, “radio stripe” hardware including transceivers at 130GHz-175GHz, packaging, integration, and plastic waveguide for a low-cost, easy-deployable sub-THz infrastructure
– Conception of a combined low-frequency and sub-THz distributed MIMO system supporting joint high-resolution sensing, high-accuracy positioning, and high-resilience and reliable communication.

Contact Details

Website: https://horizon-6gtandem.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Barbara Gaggl  coordination@horizon-6gtandem.eu

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

As the world moves from the 5G towards the 6G era, the mobile communications fabric needs to be architected differently to accommodate the emerging stringent requirements of innovative, extreme future-looking applications that cannot be served by existing 5G mobile networks. Heading towards the next decade, when 6G is expected to be widely deployed, 5G application types will be redefined by morphing the classical service classes of URLLC, eMBB, and mMTC and introducing new services. ADROIT6G is an SNS JU project supporting the EC’s 6G policy by implementing the first phase of the 6G SNS roadmap towards the evolution of a 6G architecture. ADROIT6G proposes disruptive innovations in the architecture of emerging 6G mobile networks that will make fundamental changes to the way networks are designed, implemented, operated, and maintained. Such innovations include: (i) AI/ML-powered optimizations across the entire network, for high performance and automation; (ii) Transforming to a fully cloud-native network software, which can be implemented across a variety of edge-cloud platforms, including Non-Terrestrial Networks, with security built integrally into the network user plane; (iii) Software driven, zero-touch operations and ultimately automation of every aspect of the network and the services it delivers. ADROIT6G innovations, functionalities and performance will be validated through 3 representative extreme 6G use cases (i.e., holographic telepresence, Industrial IoT, collaborative robots/drones) in corresponding PoCs over five well-established 5G testbeds, which will be upgraded to support ADROIT6G innovations and architectural elements. Our 13-partner consortium is driven by industry heavyweights from the EU telecom and ICT industries and renowned research organisations, with a vast expertise and experience in 5G and beyond technologies. Most of ADROIT6G’s consortium partners have participated in 44 previously funded 5G-PPP projects and in several 5G-PPP Working Groups.

Contact Details

Website: https://adroit6g.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Marios Sophocleous, Technikon

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

CENTRIC proposes to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques through a top-down, modular approach to wireless connectivity that puts the users’ communication needs and environmental constraints at the centre of the network stack design. It all starts with the users’ objectives and application-specific requirements. Then, AI techniques are used to create and customise tailor-made waveforms, transceivers, signalling, protocols and RRM procedures to support these requirements. This is the user-centric AI Air Interface (AI-AI) that CENTRIC will enable. To guarantee that CENTRIC’s AI-AI can be implemented in practice, we will also explore and develop innovative hardware computing substrates with realistic and AI-AI-compatible energy-efficiency properties. This includes novel electronics such as neuromorphic computing and mixed analogue-digital platforms. CENTRIC will make this possible by advancing theory, algorithms, hardware co-design, and training and monitoring environments based on digital twins. We will focus on providing the desired quality of experience (QoE) to a given user, or type of users, while optimising spectrum usage, minimising energy consumption and guaranteeing EMF compliance. The results of CENTRIC will be validated and demonstrated in laboratory prototypes, and its breakthroughs will enable future 6G use-cases, such as self-driving vehicles, the internet of nano bio-things, or multi-sensory holographic communications.

Contact Details

Website: https://centric-sns.eu/     Social Media:
General Contact: contact@centric-sns.eu
Project Coordinator: Halid Hrasnica

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

6G infrastructures must ensure reliability, trust and resilience on a globally connected continuum of heterogeneous environments supported by the convergence of networks and IT systems to enable new future digital services. The substantial increase in coverage and network heterogeneity raises severe concerns that 6G security and privacy can be worse than the previous generations. The 6G network should be a deep integration of emerging AI tools, new hardware components and accelerators, compute and networking functions, IoT and edge nodes. Contemporary security is not designed to serve a massive number of connected and highly mobile heterogeneous devices. CONFIDENTIAL6G emphasises privacy preservation and security of sensitive data by focusing on the protection of data:
• In use. This is an unsolved issue with solutions just emerging with Confidential Computing.
• In transit. CONFIDENTIAL6G will enhance communication protection with post-quantum cryptography, blockchain technologies and secure data access control and traceability platforms.
• At the Edge. CONFIDENTIAL6G will work on specifying the post-quantum cryptographic approach most appropriate to cater for constrained Edge and IoT devices. Additionally, to avoid data movement from the Edge and increase trust and security, Federated AI/ML will be researched.
CONFIDENTIAL6G will base its research on 3 pillars: Post-quantum cryptography, Confidential Computing and Confidential Communication. CONFIDENTIAL6G will test and validate the developed solutions in three use cases: 1) Predictive maintenance for airline consortium using blockchain-based data sharing platform and federated AI/ML orchestration, 2) Privacy-preserving confidential computing platform that enables mitigation of internal threats for telecom cloud providers and 3) Intelligent connected vehicle, mission-critical services, OTA updates, FL/ML and vehicle to infrastructure communication.

Contact Details

Website: https://confidential6g.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Vera Stavroulaki, WINGS ICT Solutions

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

Digitalisation is transforming industries and society with the adoption of edge/cloud computing, AI and digital twins. In the future, physical processes, collaborating machines, but also novel human system interactions will move towards a cyber-physical continuum merging the physical world of senses, actions, as well as their digital programmable representations. Fundamentally new requirements for deterministic communication with predictable performance will appear for such cyber-physical end-to-end services. Wired deterministic communication standards have already emerged, including Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) and Deterministic Networking (DetNet), while 5G has specified mechanisms for interworking with those standards. However, the available support of 5G in conjunction with TSN and DetNet is not sufficient for future end-to-end time-critical applications. Driven by pivotal use cases from Industry 5.0, DETERMINISTIC6G addresses three central challenges of future deterministic end-to-end communication enabled by 6G: (1) a new architecture for 6G systems providing predictable performance and integrating it end-to-end with TSN and DetNet; (2) novel data-driven awareness of stochastically evolving network performance, with time synchronization over heterogeneous domains; and (3) leveraging novel digital twins of both 6G networks and cyber-physical systems, to anticipate situational circumstances impacting determinism of networks and safety of cyber-physical systems. DETERMINISTIC6G will also devise security-by-design for deterministic communication, including the integration of edge computing and the support of OPC UA into deterministic network paths. The project targets the dissemination of results towards the three essential standardisation bodies in this domain: 3GPP (for 6G), IEEE802.1 (for TSN) and IETF (for DetNet). With a strong consortium driving these standards, DETERMINISTIC6G will ensure uptake of the results and insights towards global 6G standards and industry fora.

Contact Details

Website: https://deterministic6g.eu/     Social Media:  

Project Coordinator: Janos Harmatos, Ericsson

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

1. ERICSSON GMBH, DE
2. MONTIMAGE EURL, FR
3. SILICON AUSTRIA LABS GMBH, AT
4. CUMUCORE OY, FI
5. KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN, SE
6. UNIVERSITY OF STUTTGART, DE
7. ERICSSON MAGYARORSZAG KOMMUNIKACIOS RENDSZEREK KFT, HU
8. ERICSSON AB, SE
9. B&R INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION GMBH, AT
10. ORANGE SA FR
11. IUVO SRL, IT
12. SCUOLA SUPERIORE DI STUDI UNIVERSITARI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO’S ANNA, IT

Project Mission

Over the past decades, mobile communications have evolved over the different generations to the current 5G, and transformed into a fundamental infrastructure that supports digital demands from all industry sectors. However, 5G systems are expected to fall short on meeting the anticipated stringent performance requirements for the new generation of real-time mission-critical applications. In view of that, DESIRE6G will design and develop a novel zero-touch control, management, and orchestration platform, with native integration of AI, to support eXtreme URLLC application requirements. DESIRE6G will re-architect mobile networks through a) its intent-based control and end-to-end orchestration that targets to achieve near real-time autonomic networking; and b) a cloud-native unified programmable data plane layer supporting multi-tenancy. A generic hardware abstraction layer will support the latter for heterogeneous systems. The flexible composition of modular micro-services for slice-specific implementations and flexible function placement depending on HW requirements will enable granular use case instantiation and service level assurance with minimum resource consumption and maximum energy efficiency. The DESIRE6G data, control, management, and orchestration plane is supported by a pervasive monitoring system, extending from the network to the user equipment or IoT terminal. DESIRE6G will employ distributed ledger technology to support a) dynamic federation for services across multiple administrative domains and b) infrastructure-agnostic software security. Finally, DESIRE6G will enable communication-, and energy-efficient distributed AI, at the network edge, while considering application-level requirements and resource constraints. The proposed innovations will be validated by employing a VR/AR/MR and a Digital Twin application at two different experimental sites.

Contact Details

Website: https://desire6g.eu/    Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Chrysa Papagianni, University of Amsterdam

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

ETHER aims to provide a holistic approach for integrated terrestrial-non-terrestrial networks targeting 100% network coverage, 99.99999% service continuity and 99.99999% reliability, with 3 times higher energy efficiency and 95% Total Cost of Ownership reduction compared to current terrestrial-only deployments. To achieve these goals, ETHER develops solutions for a Unified Radio Access Network (RAN) and for the energy-efficient, AI-enabled resource management across the terrestrial, aerial and space domains, while creating the business plans driving future investments in the area. To that end, ETHER introduces and combines a series of key technologies under a unique 3D multi-layered architectural proposition that brings together: i) a UE antenna design and implementation for direct handheld access in the integrated network, ii) a robust unified waveform, iii) energy-efficient seamless horizontal and vertical handover policies, iv) zero-touch management and network orchestrator to self-adapt to rapidly evolving traffic conditions without human intervention, v) a flexible payload system to enable programmability in the aerial and space layers, vi) joint communication, compute and storage resource allocation solutions targeting at End- to-End network performance optimization leveraging efficient and novel predictive analytics schemes, and vii) energy-efficient semantics-aware information handling techniques combined with edge computing and caching for reduced latency across the distributed 3D compute and storage continuum.

Contact Details

Website: https://www.ether-project.eu/     Social Media:
General Contact: info@ether-project.eu
Project Coordinator: Konstantinos NTONTIN, University of Luxembourg

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Contact Details

Website: https://6g-flexscale.eu/en/    Social Media: 
General Contact:  flexscale@upatras.gr

Project Coordinator: Ioannis Tomkos, University of Patras

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Project Mission

FLEX-SCALE advances disruptive research on complementary optical x-haul network technologies for Optical Switching Nodes and their Transceiver Interfaces that enable flexible capacity scaling (10 Tb/s rate per interface, 1 Pb/s capacity per link and 10 Pb/s throughput per optical node) based on utilization of ultra-high bandwidth photonic/plasmonic technologies and the efficient exploitation of optical spatial and spectral switching (UltraWide- Band Spectral & Spatial Lanes Multiplexing; UWB/SDM). The developed X-Haul 6G optical network innovations will achieve record energy efficiency (sub-pJ per switched/transmitted bit ) and low cost, enabled by photonic integration and optical transparency, replacing/bypassing power-hungry and costly electronic processing systems (e.g., electronic routers/switches). The Optical Nodes and their Transceiver Interfaces will be controlled by ML-enabled SDN control plane approaches that incorporate new resource allocation algorithms and protocols relying on emerging information models and enabling autonomous programmable disaggregated open networks, which will optimize traffic flow routing across network layers and segments, improving network QoS (high rates, low latency, high reliability/availability) and low cost/power consumption, as required by 6G specifications.
FLEX-SCALE consortium spans the value chain of industry/academia experts on the targeted topics (transformational transceivers and optical switches, network planning, operation algorithms and protocols development) with demonstrated experience in delivering on their promises, as indicated by their research output and exploitation towards new products, services and standards contributions. FLEX-SCALE is poised to extend Europe’s leadership in 6G x-haul with offerings of the highest-capacity flexible optoelectronic interfaces and fast switching nodes that fully exploit the optical spatial/spectral resources with the use of novel algorithms and control-plane implementations.

Participants

Project Mission

To deliver on our European 6G vision for the 2030s, and to tackle opportunities and challenges of increasing magnitude, e.g., sustainability, trustworthiness, green deal efficiency, digital inclusion, there is a need for a flagship project, towards the elaboration of a holistic 6G network platform and system. To fill this need, Hexa-X-II is proposed with the ambition of being this flagship project and of inspiring the world for digital transformation through novel 6G services. Hexa-X-II will work, beyond enabler-oriented research, to optimise systemisation, early validation, and proof-of-concept; work will progress from the 6G key enablers that connect the human, physical, and digital worlds, as explored in Hexa-X, to advanced technology readiness levels, including key aspects of modules/protocols/interfaces/data.
Hexa-X II includes: (a) the provision of advanced/refined use cases, services, and requirements, ensuring value for society; (b) the delivery of the 6G platform blueprint, which will encompass enhanced connectivity for 6G services, mechanisms realizing the “networks beyond communications” vision (sensing, computing, trustworthy AI), efficient network management schemes; (c) the realization of extended validation at system and component level; (d) actions for global impact, while assuring strategic autonomy in critical areas for the EU.
Europe is starting from the pole position with 6G research and is leading wireless network technologies today. Now is the time to leverage our joint research ambition with a flagship project that will lead the R&D effort towards end-to-end systemisation and validation. The Hexa-X-II flagship is a unique effort and a holistic vision of a 6G system of integrated technology enablers, which accomplish “beyond the sum of the parts”, and of a “network beyond communications” platform for disruptive economic/environmental/societal impact; these are vital for establishing the European 6G technology leadership!

Contact Details

Website: https://hexa-x-ii.eu/     Social Media:
Project Coordinator: Mikko Uusitalo, Nokia Bell Labs

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

6G technologies, benefitting from softwarisation, Gb/s speed and sub-THz communications paradigms, open up opportunities for developing new and innovative network management strategies while navigating the evolution toward disaggregation, new software-based paradigms in architecting and operating future connectivity platforms, and embracing features of computing, automation and smartness, trust, privacy and security. Supported by this technology evolution, as the vision of new, smart and innovative capabilities is becoming a reality, a superb user experience is expected even in the presence of mobility and resource volatility. However, the fundamentally new and unknown features of advanced, disaggregated, virtualised, and multi-vendor 6G-based infrastructures challenge the security and resilience design to the next level, by managing the unknown, complex and highly versatile infrastructures as they evolve. Indeed, the future deployment of 6G networks is inextricably connected with an integration of diverse hardware elements and infrastructures, thus leading not only to a highly heterogeneous environment but also to functions and features that cannot be anticipated at the time of design. The vision of HORSE in this complex scenario is to deal with the technology solutions and system evaluation not yet foreseen, towards an omnipresent, smart and secure network service provisioning in the future network-of-networks landscape. To this end, HORSE proposes a novel human-centric, open-source, green, sustainable, coordinated provisioning and protection evolutionary platform, which can inclusively yet seamlessly combine advancements in several domains, as they get added to the system (e.g., predictive threats detection, proactive business-wise threats and breaches mitigation actions, programmable networking, semantic communications, Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), intent-based networking, AI-based techniques, cross-layer management of physical layer features, etc.).

Contact Details

Website: https://www.horse-6g.eu/     Social Media:
Project Coordinator: Fabrizio Granelli, CNIT

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

6G is envisioned to accelerate the path started in 5G for catering to the needs of a wide variety of vertical use cases, both current and emerging. This will require major enhancements to the current 5G capabilities, especially in terms of bandwidth, latency, reliability, security, and energy. PREDICT-6G’s mission is therefore set towards the development of an end-to-end 6G (e2e) solution, including architecture and protocols that can guarantee seamless provisioning of services for vertical use cases requiring extremely tight timing and reliability constraints. To succeed, the solution will target deterministic network infrastructures at large, including wired and wireless segments and their interconnections. PREDICT-6G will develop a novel Multi-technology Multi-domain Data-Plane (MDP), overhauling the reliability and time sensitivity design features existing in current wired and wireless standards. The ambition is for the MDP design to be inherently deterministic. To achieve this, PREDICT-6G will develop an AI-driven Multi-stakeholder Inter-domain Control-Plane (AICP) to provide deterministic network paths to support time-sensitive services as requested by end-customers and with different scaling ambitions, e.g., from the network in a single vehicle to a large, geographically dispersed network. This requires timely monitoring and prediction of the behaviour of the complete network, including identifying potential sources of quality violations and analysing various routes of the traffic flows. These capabilities will be delivered through the PREDICT-6G AI-powered Digital Twin (DT) framework, allowing the prediction of the behaviour of the end-to-end network infrastructure, and enabling anticipative control and validation of the network provisions to meet the real-world time-sensitive and reliability requirements of the running services.

Contact Details

Website: https://predict-6g.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Antonio de la Olivia Delgado, UC3M

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

Privacy is considered a key pillar in EU research and development activities towards 6G. In the 6G multi-actor pluralistic environment, privacy is pivotal, not only for the end users, but also for all involved stakeholders, and it needs to be taken into account as a key requirement in all technologies of the network stack, including security mechanisms. In other words, the challenge for security enablers in future networks is, on the one hand, to address the significantly widened 6G threat landscape, while on the other hand, to preserve the privacy of all actors in the 6G chain. Intrusive security cannot be any more considered acceptable.
In this context, the mission of PRIVATEER is to pave the way for 6G “privacy-first security” by studying, designing and developing innovative security enablers for 6G networks, following a privacy-by-design approach.
The PRIVATEER “privacy-first” 6G security framework will consist of a set of enablers built around four pillars: i) decentralised robust security analytics, towards avoiding data centralisation as well as AI mechanisms hardened against adversarial actions resulting in privacy breaches; ii) privacy-aware slicing and security service orchestration, introducing “privacy intent” as an additional factor affecting network service lifecycle management; iii) distributed attestation and identity check, making authentication and integrity verification more privacy-friendly; and iv) searchable encryption mechanisms for privacy-preserving Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) sharing.
The integrated PRIVATEER framework will be deployed in a campus-wide B5G test network and evaluated against relevant vertical use case scenarios. The security enablers developed in PRIVATEER will complement (and be compatible with) “native” 5G/6G security controls as standardised by 3GPP for basic functionalities (network attachment, authentication, authorisation, etc.) to achieve a holistic, privacy-friendly security solution for future networks.

Contact Details

Website: https://www.privateer-project.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Georgios Gardikis, Space Hellas

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

RIGOUROUS project aspires to identify and address the major cybersecurity, trust and privacy risks threatening the network, devices, computing infrastructure, and next generation of services. RIGOUROUS will address these challenges by introducing a new holistic and smart service framework leveraging new machine learning (ML) and AI mechanisms, which can react dynamically to the ever-changing threat surface on all orchestration layers and network functions.
RIGOUROUS’s new smart service framework is capable of ensuring a secure, trusted and privacy-preserving environment for supporting the next generation of trustworthy continuum computing 6G services along the full device-edge-cloud-continuum on heterogeneous multi-domain networks. This includes establishing compliance with the design of software (SW), protocols and procedures, as well as AI-governed mechanisms to cope with the security-related requirements in the full DevOps lifecycle, from the service onboarding up to the day-2 operations. Further, the DevOps lifecycle spans from the prevention and detection of anomalies and/or intrusions at different levels (physical or cyber) based on violation of policies or rules, up to their mitigation and policy enforcement. It also comprises the incorporation of the human factor, starting from the design until the human-in-the-loop concept in the whole orchestration. Additionally, extensive research devoted to realising advanced security enablers is carried out to bring automation and intelligence to the smart, but also secure, orchestration concept.

In brief, RIGOUROUS targets the following key objectives:

• Holistic Smart Service framework for securing the IoT-Edge-Cloud continuum lifecycle management
• Human-Centric DevSecOps
• Model-based and AI-driven Automated Security Orchestration, Trust Management and deployment
• Advanced AI-driven Anomaly Detection, decision and Mitigation Strategies
• Demonstration of a Set of Industrially Relevant Use Cases in Operational Environments

Participants

Project Mission

SUPERIOT aims at developing a truly sustainable and highly flexible IoT system based on the use of optical and radio communications, and the exploitation of printed electronics technology for the implementation of sustainable IoT nodes. The dual-mode optical-radio approach provides unique characteristics to the IoT system. The system can be reconfigured to use optical, radio, or both connectivity approaches. The hybrid optical-radio system allows very efficient use of resources while combining the advantages of both wireless communication methods. Energy autonomous nodes can harvest energy from both sources, resulting in an efficient and reliable energy system. Positioning accuracy can also be improved by combining optical and radio signals. Moreover, the dual-mode approach results in a highly flexible and adaptable communication system that can operate efficiently under changing conditions and in different scenarios. The implementation of the IoT nodes will aim at maximising printed electronics usage, resulting in a cost-efficient, environmentally friendly solution. Nodes will have essential IoT functionalities such as sensing, actuating, and computational capabilities. As important as the development of a sustainable and flexible IoT node will be the development of its networking capabilities. The project will also identify, develop, and demonstrate applications for the proposed concept. Four demonstrators will be developed at the final stage of the project, including a) Reconfigurable optical-radio IoT node implemented with printed and conventional electronics technologies (Application: smart tags), b) Reconfigurable optical-radio IoT network (Application: logistics in medical ICT scenarios), c) Limited capability IoT node implemented with printed electronics technology only, and d) Large-area IoT node/repeater. The SUPERIOT concept is based on developing an IoT system that is both sustainable by design and sustainable by implementation.
Key elements for:

• 6GATsaynstdeemm: defining an ‘aligned tandem’ dual-frequency distributed MIMO architecture
• Medium-aware waveforms, transmission schemes and communication strategies for energy-efficient operation and development of cross-layer solutions to offer required service levels on the novel dual-frequency infrastructure
• Novel, “radio stripe” hardware including transceivers at 130GHz-175GHz, packaging, integration, and plastic waveguide for a low-cost, easy-deployable sub-THz infrastructure
• Conception of a combined low-frequency and sub-THz distributed MIMO system supporting joint high-resolution sensing, high-accuracy positioning, and high-resilience and reliable communication.

Contact Details

Website: https://superiot.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinators: Tuomas Paso & Marcos Katz, University of Oulu

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

TERA6G aims at developing disruptive photonic wireless transceivers enabling Terabit-per-second data throughput capacity and massive Multiple-Input/Multiple-Output multi-antenna techniques operating in the millimetre-wave (30 GHz to 300 GHz) and Terahertz (300 GHz to 3 THz) bands of the spectrum, unlocking the “Fiberover-the-Air” concept. The concept uses independently steerable wireless pencil-beams with fibre data throughput capacity, allowing mobile site connectivity scenarios in dense urban areas with macro/street level densification, temporal mobile site connectivity in ad-hoc networks, and connectivity to moving objects in public or private networks.
Hybrid photonic integration is the key enabler technology to develop a Blass-Matrix Transmitter and an incoherent-multi-band Receiver with key disruptive characteristics, including agility (handling any modulation scheme and continuous tuning of the carrier frequency across the target spectrum range), scalability (handling large number of beams with 2-dimensional antenna arrays for beamformed antenna gain >25 dBi and > 100º steering angles beam-steering) and reconfigurability (performing a variety of functions, from wireless data transmission, or radar ranging to channel sounding).
These disruptive wireless transceiver modules’ characteristics will be exploited at the network level by developing the dynamic allocation of the network resources that these bring. We plan to dynamically analyse the position of the different wireless nodes and the channel resources using, respectively, the radar ranging and channel sounding techniques enabled by the novel reconfigurable TERA6G photonic transceivers. This will allow for novel scheduling methods capable of alternating paths to establish the connectivity, ensuring connection reliability, and considering energy consumption in the establishment of the wireless link.
TERA6G is the crossroad of previous H2020 projects TERAWAY, ARIADNE, TERRANOVA and FUDGE-5G.

Contact Details

Website: https://www.uc3m.es/research/TERA6G     Social Media:  

Project Coordinator: Guillermo Carpintero, UC3M

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

The sixth generation (6G) of mobile communications, planned around 2030, is expected to support innovative applications with requirements not met with today’s technologies, such as massive-scale communications (within IoT), the Internet of senses, holographic communications, massive digital twinning and Extreme Reality, full autonomous driving and flying networks, considering use cases in smart cities, smart home and factories (e.g. ultrahigh precision 3D positioning). With the emergence of viable THz communications systems on the horizon, it is crucial to contribute to THz communication and networking to the technology roadmap for the beyond 6G timeframe and a step closer to industrial uptake. The TERRAMETA project aims to investigate revolutionary technologies for 6G and demonstrate the feasibility of Terahertz (THz) Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) assisted ultra-high data rate wireless communications networks. Novel high-performance hardware, including the THz RIS and THz transmitter/receiver, will be developed, and advanced network analysis/optimisation techniques will be developed using these real THz components. The proposed TERRAMETA THz network will be driven by 6G usage scenario requirements, and indoor, outdoor, and indoor-to-outdoor scenarios will be demonstrated in real factory settings and telecom testing fields. It is expected that the outcome of this project will significantly progress innovations across the 6G Technology and systems.

Contact Details

Website: https://terrameta-project.eu     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Luis M. Pessoa, INESC TEC

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Participants

Contact Details

Website: http://www.times6g.eu/    Social Media:    
General Contact:  times.info@wilab.org
Project Coordinator: Luca SANGUINETTI, CNIT

Contribution to the SNS JU Journal 2025

Project Mission

Future wireless networks are envisioned to support novel applications that require similar performance as wired networks in terms of data rate (Tbps), ultra-low-latency (well below 1 ms), sensing (e.g., mm-level localisation accuracy), and reliability (e.g., 1 in a billion transmission error). The current 5G approaches have a hard time keeping up with such envisioned applications. TIMES addresses this problem by combining novel radio channel propagation measurements and modelling approaches, spectrally efficient and reliable communications at Terahertz (THz) spectrum bands with intelligent mesh networking protocols and smart sensing and shaping of the propagation environment through reconfigurable meta-surfaces. While the fundamental technologies developed will apply to different beyond-5G scenarios, TIMES will focus on an industrial setting, since many of the envisioned applications in this complex scenario (e.g., cooperative robots, predictive maintenance, real-time closed-loop control) require concurrent high performance, reliability, and sensing capabilities. To tackle the challenge, TIMES extends the state-of-the-art on three fronts: 1) Propagation channel measurements and characterization in THz bands, including measurement and modeling of meta-surfaces and electromagnetic leakage in complex scenarios; 2) Developing technological enablers for reliable THz communications (e.g., smart beam management, ultra-massive MIMO, THz-tailored PHY and MAC design, meta-surfaces, and new mesh-based architecture); and 3) Implementation of a THz mesh network prototype, including design and fabrication of both active (transceivers) and passive (metasurface) nodes, to validate selected technological enablers developed in TIMES.

Participants

Project Mission

6G networks, currently only existing as concepts, are envisioned as portals to a fully digitized society, where the physical and virtual world are blended via boundless Extended Reality (XR), and also as an enabler for the Digital and Green transformation of the European Industries. To support this vision, the network capacity must be increased at least by an order of magnitude, while infrastructures must be transformed into a very dense continuum. Thus, academia and industry have shifted their attention to the investigation of a new generation of Smart Networks and infrastructures. It is clear that to win this race towards shaping the next-generation communication ecosystem, a new generation of testbed infrastructures and breakthrough research and technology development is needed needed, as well as a new generation of testbeds to support future research initiative. To this end, 6G-BRICKS aims to deliver a new 6G facility, building on the baseline of mature ICT-52 platforms, that bring breakthrough cell-free and RIS technologies that have shown promise for beyond 5G networks. Moreover, novel unified control paradigms based on Explainable AI and Machine Reasoning are explored. All enablers will be delivered in the form of reusable components with open APIs, termed “bricks“. Finally, initial integrations with O-RAN are performed, aiming for the future-proofing and interoperability of 6G-BRICKS outcomes.

Contact Details

Website: https://6g-bricks.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Christos Verikoukis, SIS/ATH

Contribution to the SNS Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

The 6G-SANDBOX project brings a complete and modular facility for the European experimentation ecosystem (in line and under the directions set by SNS JU), which is expected to support for the next decade technology and research validation processes needed in the pathway towards 6G. The target is at technologies and research advances, that span over the entire service provisioning chain, and refer to user/data, control and management planes. In this direction, 6G-SANDBOX introduces the concept of Trial Networks, which refers to fully configurable, manageable and controlled end-to-end networks, composed of both digital and physical nodes. The 6G-SANDBOX Trial Networks incorporate infrastructures distributed in EU (namely in Malaga, Athens, Berlin and Oulu) and offer to third parties (including experimenters from open calls) automated experimentation capabilities through a rich and extensible toolbox. Meant to create tangible and long-term impact, the 6G KPIs and KVIs that will be quantified with the facility, will be released to any interested party; while the set of developments and APIs that will be produced, will feed an open repository as an initial step to move the contributions and the lessons learned beyond the project boarders and define a European 6G library.

Contact Details

Website: https://6g-sandbox.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Micheal Dieudonne, Keysight Technologies

Contribution to the SNS Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

6G eXperimental research infRastructure to enable next-generation XR services (6G-XR) will develop an experimental infrastructure for the duration of the SNS programme that covers demonstrating the performance of key B5G/6G candidate technologies, components, and architectures to keep the infrastructures valid now, in midterm and in long-term. It will demonstrate the technological feasibility of “better than 5G” KPIs, innovative radio spectrum technologies and the use and sharing applicable to beyond 5G and 6G spectrum, validate a representative end-to-end beyond 5G architecture (and later 6G) including end-to-end service provisioning with slicing capabilities, and at the cloud implementation level (Open RAN).
Furthermore, 6G-XR shall validate multi-access edge computing scenarios and their integration into a complete cloud continuum, support innovative use cases with vertical actors, beyond 5G capabilities, and support showcasing events. In addition, 6G-XR demonstrates and validates the performance of innovative 6G applications with a focus on demanding immersive applications such as holographic, digital twins and XR/VR. 6G-XR will support impactful contributions to standards and demonstrate the technological feasibility of key societal requirements and objectives such as energy reduction at both platform and network levels.

Contact Details

Website: https://www.6g-xr.eu/    Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Jussi Haapola, University of Oulu

Contribution to the SNS Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

Long-term towards Evolved 5G and 6G research needs mobilisation of massive volumes of ideas, from which the best can emerge and be taken into standardisation. It is the convergence of the cyber and physical worlds that could be achieved with the very low latency and high data capacity of Beyond 5G and 6G networks, and thus the creation of services such as digital twins and internet of senses/haptic applications. This future eco-system is on course to be more collaborative and inclusive than previous generations of networks, and FIDAL aims to lead the way by promoting open architectures, large experimentation sites and taking a multi-stakeholder approach.
FIDAL steps in, targeting the augmentation of human capabilities, allowing Media & PPDR vertical industry players to perform advanced technological and business validation in large-scale field trials of highly innovative and advanced applications that exploit Evolved 5G technologies.
This, in turn, will provide extensive and valuable feedback to the broader industry, academia, innovators and community before wide commercial deployments of Evolved 5G networks throughout Europe. FIDAL’s key objective is to extend and deliver (i) advanced future-proof Evolved 5G test infrastructures, anticipating evolution into the next SNS phase, (ii) open & accessible to support 3rd party vertical experiments, (iii) test environments for rapid prototyping and large-scale validation of advanced, forward-looking applications.
The project will build on the success of 5G-PPP Phase 3 projects, producing a unified experimentation framework with Zero-Touch orchestration, reusable NetApps and secure AI as a Service capabilities.
FIDAL will deploy 3 testbeds and 3 large-scale test infrastructures in Greece, Norway and Spain, aiming to validate Evolved 5G technologies in a user context to maximise downstream take-up, thus cultivating the ground for 6G.

Contact Details

Website: https://fidal-he.eu/    Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Ioannis Markopoulos, NOVA

Contribution to the SNS Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

The evolution of mobile telecoms networks Beyond-5G creates a tremendous opportunity for Europe to establish leadership in innovation by addressing the requirements of use cases from PPDR, smart agriculture, media, eHealth, education, transportation, logistics, Industry 4.0, and energy sectors. IMAGINE-B5G project aims to create an advanced and accessible end-to-end (E2E) 5G platform for Large-Scale Trials and Pilots, providing a set of B5G applications, enabled by the integration of advanced 5G disrupting technologies. The project will support 3GPP Rel 17 and beyond features, which are crucial for the implementation of private networks under real-life operational conditions to enable advanced 5G services which are driven by the industrial needs and requirements of a wide variety of verticals. The functionalities built into the B5G platform will enable these advanced 5G vertical applications to be demonstrated at scale and will allow the project to identify and validate new 5G KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and KVIs (Key Value Indicators) across three different but equally fundamental domains – societal, application and management. All KPIS and KVIs will be verified as relevant to the use cases supported, through demonstration of their importance to end-to-end large-scale trials and pilots.
IMAGINE-B5G brings together four advanced 5G experimental facilities in Norway, Spain, Portugal and France. These facilities will capitalise onthe  previous 5G-PPP infrastructure (ICT-17) and vertical trial projects (ICT-19), reusing the platform components and extending the existing capabilities of these facilities. This will ensure a successful implementation of SNS-D-01-01 goals and expected outcomes. The IMAGINE-B5G strategy to achieve this is built on up implementation of the latest 5G Rel-16 technology enablers. The project is envisioned to become an incubator, facilitating technology innovations and a diverse set of advanced 5G applications, services and ecosystem developments.

Contact Details

Website: https://imagineb5g.eu/     Social Media:
General Contact: imagine-b5g-comm@ubiwhere.com
Project Coordinator: David Gómez-Barquero, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia

Contribution to the SNS Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

EOB The fifth generation of wireless technology (5G) has arrived and is being rolled out globally. First industrial sectors such as manufacturing are testing the capabilities of 5G showing great potential for ubiquitous connectivity. With the sixth generation (6G), wireless communication will bring new features, improved performance, and functional benefits to several industrial sectors.
The TARGET-X project envisions accelerating the digital transformation of key verticals: energy, construction, automotive, and manufacturing using large-scale trials in multiple testbeds. By demonstrating, validating, and evaluating the potential of 5G/6G in real environments, the most advanced 5G/6G technologies such as real-time communication, localization, self-description, digital twinning, and sensor-network data fusion, can be tested and evaluated. The focus of the evaluation is on KPIs and especially KVIs, such as sustainability, safety, security, and privacy. Based on these KVIs, new business models and a methodological assessment framework for economic and societal evaluation will be developed. The development of the solutions will be supported and guided by the TARGET-X community, a network of SMEs, IT- and OT-partners, and up to 100 FSTP projects, bringing together a strong consortium with SMEs and innovation drivers.
To reach TARGET-X’s goals, a selection of use cases will be established for all verticals in the existing 5G testbeds. New 5G/6G features will be developed and integrated into the testbeds and validated in evolved use cases. The FTSP projects will both deliver new use cases and technical contributions. A large number of FTPS participants will strengthen the 5G/6G ecosystem. Results of the project will be discussed with 6G-SNS projects and used for standardisation, also in the different verticals.

Contact Details

Website: https://target-x.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Niels Konig, Fraunhofer IPT

Contribution to the SNS Journal 2025

Participants

Project Mission

TrialsNet will deploy full large-scale trials to implement a heterogenous and comprehensive set of innovative 6G applications based on various technologies such as cobots, metaverse, massive twinning, Internet of Senses, and covering three relevant domains of the urban ecosystems in Europe identified by i) Infrastructure, Transportation, Security & Safety, ii) eHealth & Emergency, and iii) Culture, Tourism & Entertainment. There will be 13 representative use cases developed over wide coverage areas with the involvement of extended sets of real users in 4 geographical clusters, in Italy, Spain, Greece and Romania. The use cases will be transversal; each single use case will be potentially implementable over different clusters, thus allowing for a holistic evaluation of the network KPIs.
Targeting to improve the “liveability” of the urban environment in the different domains, TrialsNet will also pursue the objective to i) understand where current networks are not sufficient to assure the performance needed by the use cases, and to ii) derive the new requirements for next-generation mobile networks. To achieve this, TrialsNet will design and deploy platforms and network solutions with advanced functionalities based on dynamic slicing management, E2E orchestration, NFV, MEC and AI/ML methods to be trialled on 3GPP and O-RAN network architectures. Design objectives of sustainability and affordability of the deployed systems will also be treated with the highest priority.
Finally, TrialsNet will also develop appropriate technical assessment frameworks mapping quantitative and qualitative measures and visualising the dynamics of the use cases for society acceptance. Proper KVIs will be monitored, proved and refined to provide a socio-technical vision towards early adoption of 6G solutions.

Contact Details

Website: https://www.trialsnet.eu/     Social Media:

Project Coordinator: Silvia Provvedi, Ericsson

Contribution to the SNS Journal 2025

Participants