STARLight is a major opportunity to establish Europe at the forefront of 300mm Silicon Photonics (SiPho) innovation and thus “Solidify the European photonics ecosystem and accelerate its industrial deployment”. The main STARLight vision is to contribute to European sovereignty relying on the achievement of an efficient and resilient ecosystem and a sustainable society by driving excellence and innovation in the implementation of 300mm silicon photonics manufacturing capacity in Europe (STMicroelectronics, France). The main STARLight goals are: -To offer Europe a realistic solution ensuring its independency on the sourcing of SiPho and other needed optical module compounds (EIC, laser), based on a true European end-to-end value chain, tailored to the global market. -To give Europe the opportunity to move forward with industrial and academic players by joining in the risk-taking necessary for the growth dynamics of SiPho optical modules in Europe, addressing applications such as Data Centers including Hyperscalers, Artificial Intelligence, Telecom, Automotive Lidar, Inter-Satellites communication. -To expand the European photonics technology platform family in terms of accessibility, upscaling and high yield, packaging assembly and providing modelling tools to converge on a mainstream simulation flow. -To be ready for future applications with 200 GBaud (400 Gbps PAM4/lane) by leveraging leading-edge SiPho technology innovations using the integration of heterogeneous non-silicon materials. -To demonstrate the benefit of SiPho optical modules sustainability, providing a better energy-saving, reliability, limited usage of copper and aluminium materials, and reducing the usage of polluting material and water. The STARLight project makes it possible to promote a concept of collaboration, which is based on an ecosystem bringing together the various actors of the supply chain ranging from the technologies, the circuits providers to the manufacturer of modules and systems.

The increasing demand of higher data rates while ensuring sustainability through reduced energy consumption levels call for a collective effort to define and set up the new generation of mobile communications. It is expected that some of the newly arising services will need to accurately map the environment for a seamless interaction of the physical and the digital worlds, and then require a combination of communications, positioning and sensing. The vision of MiFuture is that an evolution of massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO), the technique that has provided the unprecedented spectral efficiency of 5G, towards ultra-massive MIMO (UmMIMO), will be a key ingredient in the future mobile radio access network. MiFuture will pave the path towards the implementation of heterogeneous cell-free networks with an ultra-massive number of antennas that will satisfy the throughput, energy efficiency, positioning accuracy and feasible complexity requirements that the evolution of mobile communications towards 6G demands. This evolution will require a new generation of excellent researchers able to address the emerging complex engineering problems that the thriving area of mobile communications is facing. MiFuture will develop a high-level personalised multidisciplinary programme to provide 15 Ph.D. candidates, supervised by committed experts from industry and academia, with research competences and transferable skills (e.g., entrepreneurship, project management, IPR, open access) with the long-term goal to lead scientific advances in the new concepts arising in the field of wireless communications. These creative young researchers will face real world implementation, work across multiple European countries and organisations, become knowledgeable in standardisation activities, present at workshops in front of researchers and industrial stakeholders and interact with the general public to make them aware of how 6G can help in their daily lives.

Our society is on the brink of a new age with the development of new visionary concepts such as internet of things, smart cities, autonomous driving and smart industries. This stimulates the use of the millimetre-wave frequencies up to 100 GHz to support much higher data rates and to increase the capacity of mobile wireless communication systems. For achieving this, new system concepts such as Distributed Massive Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (DM-MIMO) in which instead of a single base-station, the cell is covered by multiple remote antenna stations, all connected to a central unit. To overcome existing limitations, such as poor power efficiency and poor signal quality, we propose to investigate an innovative antenna system concept utilizing both silicon and III-V semiconductor technologies, advanced signal processing concepts and radio-over-fibre interconnect between a central unit and the remote antenna stations. As current doctoral trainings are lagging behind in training researchers with the right skillset to resolve future wireless communication challenges, an EID is urgently needed. MyWAVE establishes a unique and well-structured training network with leading R&D labs from European industries, universities and technology institutes in the domain of wireless infrastructure and proven track-record in joint collaborations. The 15 ESRs will form a research team that is embedded in leading industrial and academic R&D labs. The programme will strongly enhance the employability and career prospects of the ESRs by offering a high-quality consortium with in-depth training in the technical areas as well as a comprehensive set of transferable skills relevant for innovation and long-term employability. The ESRs will all spend at least 18 months of their time at industry, ensuring that the training includes a significant industrial experience and application know-how. MyWAVE will result in a structural European Graduate School program organised by the consortium.

The focus of TRIANGLE is the development of a framework that facilitates the evaluation of the QoE of new mobile applications, services and devices designed to operate in the future 5G mobile broadband networks. The framework will exploit existing FIRE facilities adding new facilities when necessary. The project will identify reference deployment scenarios, will define new KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and QoE metrics, will develop new testing methodologies and tools, and will design a complete evaluation scheme. The project will focus on the development of a framework to ensure user QoE in the new challenging situations, especially those due to heterogeneous networks and considering the role software will have in the new 5G ecosystem The framework as value added will also provide the means to allow certification and quality mark for the applications, services and devices compliant to the requirements and test specifications developed in the project but also extensible to other FIRE test solutions. This will allow vendor differentiation, specially startups and SMEs, in the current globalized and competitive markets and further visibility of FIRE facilities. The framework, methods and tools developed during the project will focus on providing the mechanisms to incorporate new wireless technologies and topologies envisaged in 5G and contribute to the new ecosystem.