Satellite communication networks in Europe have been in the market for more than 40 years with consolidated capacity to connect remote areas and represent an essential tool for state members. Therefore, it is evident that there is a need to allow the satellite operators to manage GOVSATCOM users efficiently with the overall available resources. This project aims to evolve the flagship European initiative “GOVSATCOM-HUB” to improve the flexibility of satellite network operators in allocating their resources to the needs of GOVSATCOM users. This goal will require the development of a new interface between the G-HUB and the 5G core network entities and microservice-based services interacting among them to provide network management tasks. Moreover, the 5G-HUB project will address the interoperability issues, allowing the GOVSATCOM user terminal to connect to different space assets, eventually including terrestrial systems. This project aims to validate the G-HUB functions in three trials with the initial development of a unified 5G NTN terminal in Ku and X bands. The trials will aim to verify the system performance in terms of resource allocation, quality of service provision, and capacity to switch communication (traffic steering) from the satellite network to the terrestrial network in a way that is unnoticeable to the user. These trials will be based on critical scenarios of emergency management where there is the need to coordinate teams in remote areas where satellite systems mainly provide connectivity. The interoperability of different satellite operators will also be investigated in this context.

The integration of edge computing, advanced 5G connectivity, and decentralized processing drives the widespread deployment of private edge ecosystems capable to reshape numerous industry sectors. However, unlocking the full potentials of edge-level intelligent management requires concerted efforts in platform development and cross-sector collaboration. COP-PILOT, develops a Collaborative Open Platform framework geared towards orchestrating end-to-end services across diverse industry domains. In crafting an open platform, COP-PILOT provides a flexible solution designed to effectively manage various industry sectors while ensuring robust security, automation, and intelligence features. Regarding interoperability, the framework seamlessly integrates with underlying technologies, ranging from IoT platforms to core infrastructure, facilitating collaboration across the compute continuum. Furthermore, COP-PILOT empowers the development of advanced cross-sector applications by offering support for cutting-edge network services, thereby enabling heightened security, resource management, and automation capabilities. The implementation strategy revolves around two primary directions: enabling platform implementation and real environment integration. For the former, COP-PILOT adopts a modular orchestration approach, simplifying the onboarding of complex applications through a user-friendly generative AI interface. This approach includes integration with multi-tiered data processing, policy-driven optimization, and dynamic reasoning capabilities, ensuring alignment with prevailing industry standards. In terms of real environment integration, the platform is deployed across four large piloting clusters, addressing a diverse array of edge paradigms. These use cases span across energy, smart city, agriculture, and industrial manufacturing sectors, fostering the development of cross-sector applications in mobility, logistics, and resource management.

The impact of technology in the world's panorama is at an all-time high. Advanced media applications enabling immersive communication are becoming ubiquitous in our lives, and there is a global trend to adopt virtual solutions to support day-to-day business operations, social events, and general lifestyle. A subset of these innovative media applications includes Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Holography, but they do not come without their share of challenges and requirements. To enable a satisfactory user experience, the requirements for the computing platform and its underlying network can be considered extreme and far from what can be attainable today. Hence, we propose a Cloud for Holography and Cross Reality (CHARITY), which is a complete framework that attempts to overcome the challenges and meet the requirements of such applications. CHARITY leverages an innovative cloud architecture that exploits edge solutions, a computing and network continuum autonomous orchestration, application-driven interfacing, mechanisms for smart, adaptive and efficient resource management, strong community involvement, and overreaching compatibility with all infrastructure vendors. This integrated framework will be put into test in a broad diversity of use cases targeted at advanced media applications, such as holographic events, virtual reality training, and mixed reality entertainment. CHARITY expects to deliver a working prototype, validated by the most demanding applications, capable of being demonstrated at dissemination events and exploited by a large community of users and companies outside the consortium, paving the way to the mass adoption of more advanced media applications in the market.

The path towards 6G is beginning now that 5G matured and is being deployed worldwide both publicly and privately. While 5G brought a step up in many fields, such as, performance and efficiency, more is always expected in terms of efficiency by the overall community and in terms of performance by industry and technology providers who want to further increase their offerings and products. Continuous demands for higher throughput, lower latency and more energy efficient communications needs to be supported by relevant use cases that can claim and demonstrate the needs for these requests. 6G-PATH goal is to help foster the further development and integration of new and improved tools and products from EU companies with 5G/6G, while also measuring relevant KPIs and KVIs. To achieve this, 7 testbeds will be part of the project consortium, which will be used by 10 use cases spread across four key verticals: Health, Education, Smart Cities and Farming. Moreover, a relevant portion of the budget will be used for FSTP, where we envision the integration of 2 new Pilot Sites, extend the testbeds with 10 additional technologies, as well as 30 new Use Cases, through Open Calls, to further involve the community and obtain more metrics and outcomes. 6G-PATH plans to work closely with other ongoing/starting Stream-B and Stream-C projects in a feedback loop, where the innovations that partners are achieving in other projects can be deployed and further tested by our pool of use cases and Open Calls, while sharing our results and outcomes to further cement the innovation being made.

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 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 heterogenous 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 realizing 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 Envi