AMBROSIA aims to provide the foundations for a multi-sensing future-proof Point of Care Unit for sepsis diagnosis offered by a CMOS compatible toolkit and enhanced by on-chip photonic neural network technology to provide an accurate and rapid diagnosis. AMBROSIA will be investing in the established ultra-small-footprint and elevated sensitivity of integrated plasmo-photonic sensors reinforced by the well-known on-chip slow-light effect and micro-transfer printed lasers and photodiodes on Si3N4, as well as the functional processing and classification portfolio of integrated photonic neural network engines, towards painting the landscape of the next-coming disruption in sensor evolution, tailoring them in System-in-Package prototype assemblies, with the sensors being cheap disposable pluggable modules that can rapidly and accurately diagnose sepsis at the bedside in clinical environments. AMBROSIA targets to demonstrate a Point of Care Unit incorporating: i) a switchable sensor area array, with each sensor area facilitating a pluggable, 8-channel label-free plasmo-photonic sensor for sepsis diagnosis with a sensitivity over 130.000nm/RIU and a Limit of Detection below 10-8 RIU for each interferometric sensor, ii) an embedded Si3N4 photonic neural network processing and classifying at the same time the data from at least 7 biomarkers with zero-power providing in the first minutes an accurate and rapid diagnosis for sepsis, iii) Micro-transfer printed lasers and photodetectors on chip that will drastically decrease costs of both the sensing and neural network modules, and render the sensor arrays disposable.

NewControl will develop virtualized platforms for vehicular subsystems that are essential to highly automated driving (realizing functions such as perception, cognition and control), so as to enable mobility-as-a-service for next generation highly automated vehicles. Its overarching goal is to provide an industrially calibrated trajectory towards increased user-acceptance of automated control functions, through an approach that is centered on the premise of safety by design. Newcontrol will deliver: 1. Fail-operational platform for robust holistic perception through a combination of Lidar, Radar, and sensor fusion 2. Generalized virtual platform for stable and efficient control of propulsion systems 3. Cost- and power-efficient, high-performance embedded compute-platforms for in-vehicle perception, cognition, and control 4. Robust approaches for implementing, verifying, and certifying automated control for safety-critical applications Several (12) demonstrators will be built to showcase the project’s findings and their capability to facilitate perception, cognition and control of next generation highly automated vehicles. The developments in NewControl will facilitate significant cost reductions for essential modules necessary for future automated vehicles. Concomitantly, these developments will improve the safety and reliability of automated systems to levels necessary for mass-market deployment. These innovations will leverage the expertise of industrial (OEMs, Tier-1, Tier-2 and technology providers) and research partners along the complete semiconductor, automotive, and aviation value chains, providing Europe with a competitive edge in a growing market. Importantly, NewControl's innovations will improve the market penetration of safety-centric automation systems, contributing directly to the European goal of zero road fatalities by 2050.

The WIPE project aims at developing hybrid electronic-photonic chips as a key enabling technology for data transmission purposes. It aims at bringing photonics to a new level by developing a concept that can be well industrialised. This sustains EU leadership in photonics, as is the ambition of the work program. A new wafer-scale technology will thus be developed for direct and intimate attachment of III-V Indium-Phosphide (InP) photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and BiCMOS electronic chips (ICs). The ICs contain the driver, receiver andcontrol electronics for the PIC and enable direct connection to polymer optical waveguides. This technology of ‘wafer scale heterogeneous integration’ enables high-performance and high-density photonic-electronic (photronic) modules are created having a lower energy consumption, lower packaging complexity and lower cost compared to modules using more traditional interconnection techniques like wire bonding and laser welding of fibre connections. Next to the new bonding technology, an integrated module design technology is developed for efficient co-design of hybrid photonic and electronic modules. A library consisting of photonic/electronic standard modules, is created leveraging the process design kits (PDKs) of the most important European foundries of photonic chips in combination with a powerful BiCMOS. These tools are of significantimportance to industry, since they offer photronic module designers a standardised approach that highly facilitates the module design for SMEs and affordable manufacturing by photonic and electronic foundries. The WIPE approach will be proven by showing the feasibility of a 400Gb/s transceiver for data centre application.

The Telecom sector is predicted to explode over the next few years, driven by data from IoT sensing solutions, games, autonomous driving, gaming and AI-technologies. Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) on Indium Phosphide (InP) will play a critical role in providing the superior functionality demanded. Today. only few companies can produce integrated chips but do so exclusively for their own vertically integrated production lines, making it impossible for many thousands of other companies in sensor and data technology to tap into this technology. SMART Photonics has developed a suite of world class functional photonic modules based on InP, which can be combined together as “building blocks”. It simplifies the design of photonic circuits and allows SMART complete flexibility to quickly build up functional PICs to meet any given application. SMART has calculated its specific obtainable market in the data&telecom and sensing markets of €350m by 2021 and €1.16bn by 2023 respectively. Two first customers are ready to enter volume manufacturing in 2019/2020. By 2023, SMART plans €210m revenues at a gross margin of 70% and employ 120 staff. The Phase 2 project will help industrialize the manufacturing processes and prepare for scale-up. The project is strategic to the company as it will develop the processes needed for reliable volume production, set-up a pilot line (1.000 wafers/year) and develop a Process Design Kit – a software tool – that will empower customers to design chips with custom functionality based on SMART’s technology platform. At the end of Phase 2 SMART will: • be positioned as the only independent foundry for InP PICs. • have achieved readiness necessary build a commercial scale facility at 20,000 wafers/year • have new building block capabilities allowing new applications in new, yet untargeted, markets SMART is run by an experienced team with deep technical and commercial semiconductor and photonics backgrounds.

Skyrocketing capacity demands and emerging 5G and industrial internet URLLC applications currently pose a new strict latency-oriented framework calling urgently for new radical architectural changes at the key aggregation infrastructure being in local proximity to the subscribers: the Central Offices (COs). A careful look into the CO reveals a capacity-latency predicament underlining the need for the employment of innovative technological solutions, with photonics emerging as the key enabling technology, that will establish a new NGCO ecosystem where component-level advancements can yield unparallel architectural benefits. OCTAPUS aims to deliver an agile, low-cost and energy-efficient PIC technology framework that will re-architect the NGCO ecosystem, transparently upgrading its capacity to 51.2Tb/s and beyond, through an innovative optically-switched backplane and transceiver toolkit. To realize its ambitious goals, OCTAPUS will leverage the novel integration of antimony-based Phase Change Materials (PCM) on the low-cost SiN to develop for the first time a non-volatile ns-scale optical switch technology for developing an ultra-high capacity optical backplane. OCTAPUS will also deploy a versatile portfolio of InP-based O-band optical components that will enable the realization of 50G low-power board-to-board and long-reach PON transceivers, securing 4x and 8x energy saving to existing state-of-the-art solutions, while reaching up to 37.5% cost improvement against conventional EML solutions, through its monolithic fabrication approach. Moreover, OCTAPUS will equip its novel PICs with low loss and compact interfaces to fibers, through advanced glass diplexer-embedded-interposers. Finally, OCTAPUS will synergize the developed optical components in a novel NGCO architecture, supporting 3 layers of traffic with deterministic latency guarantees for URLLC services, through the incorporation of reconfigurable express light paths along with TSN functionality.