Future wireless networks (FWNs) will need to efficiently and flexibly provide diversified services such as enhanced mobile broadband access, ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), and massive machine-type communications . RECOMBINE joins the scientific excellence and expertise of key academic and industrial players into a joint collaborative effort to build the framework for the design oif FWNs beyond 5G that are able to support multiple operational standards for exploitation of intrinsic network heterogeneity; capable of processing information generated from a huge volume of heterogeneous sources and with sufficient intrinsic resilience to counter potential security threats. RECOMBINE will pursue innovations for advancing in the areas of mm-wave technology, licensed spectrum access, antenna design, channel propagation and modeling, and network prediction and quality of experience supported by artifical intelligence. In addition, RECOMBINE will integrate scientific and business model innovations for building a framework to fulfill the economic potential of FWNs.

We are at the “eve” of a fundamental transition in 5G, and the aspiration of 5G-EVE is to create the foundations for a pervasive roll-out of end-to-end 5G networks in Europe. 5G-EVE supports this fundamental transition by offering to vertical industries and to all 5GPPP Phase3 projects facilities to validate their network KPIs and their services. Important representatives of these vertical industries are directly involved as partners of 5G-EVE exactly to influence the design of the end-to-end 5G services, and to provide an early assessment. The 5G-EVE end-to-end facility consists of the interconnection of four 5G-site-facilities (France, Spain, Italy, Greece), which have been selected because of their considerable previous work with vertical industries and standardisation bodies, on top of their 5G technology competences. 5G-EVE aims at creating synergies between a significant number of facilities that will ensure sustainability and impact in terms of exploitation. The 5G-EVE facility will enable experiments with: (a) heterogeneous access, including NR, licensed/unlicensed spectrum, advanced spectrum management; (b) Mobile Edge Computing, backhaul, core/service technologies; (c) means for site-interworking and multi-site/domain/technology slicing/orchestration. 5G-EVE will be initially compliant with 3GPP Rel. 15 and, later on, with Rel. 16. Industrial verticals will be facilitated in the specification/analysis of experiments through: (a) intent-based, and other high-level, interfaces; (b) means for advanced 5G testing, i.e., for KPI analysis, technology benchmarking, performance diagnosis. A VNF pool, including open source and proprietary, radio/network/service, components will be developed and made available. 5G-EVE will impact standards, and has the potential and strategy for ensuring the sustainability of the facility beyond the project lifetime, therefore becoming a cornerstone of the 5G PPP programme and beyond.

Power systems undergo massive technological changes due to the ever increasing concerns for environmental and energy sustainability. The increase of RES and DG penetration is one of the main goals in Europe in order to meet the environmental targets. However these goals will require new business cases and must be based on innovative ICT tools and communication infrastructure. On parallel, following the M/490 EU Mandate, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI proposed a technical report describing the Smart Grid Reference Architecture and the Smart Grids Architecture Model (SGAM) framework. A key objective of new Research and Innovation projects should be to provide solutions and ICT tools compatible with the SGAM and the standardization activity in Europe. Such new projects should also support the standardization activity by proposing additions or changes related to their objectives. Another key issue to address is whether the existing telecommunication infrastructure is sufficient to support in mass scale the new business cases and Smart Grid services. SmarterEMC2 implements ICT tools that support Customer Side Participation and RES integration, and facilitate open access in the electricity market. These tools take into account the SGAM as well the future structure of the Distribution Network as described by the relevant EU bodies and organizations. The project supports standardization activity by proposing adaptation to data models of market-oriented standards (IEC 62325-351) and field level standards (IEC 61850). Moreover, the project is fully dedicated towards achieving a maximum of impact. To validate the proposed technologies, the project includes 3 real-world pilots and large-scale simulation in 3 laboratories. The former will demonstrate the impact of Demand Response and Virtual Power Plants services in the real world settings, while the latter will reveal the ability of the communication networks to support massive uptake of such services.

Smart grid represents a significant new technology of improving the efficiency, reliability, and economics of the production, transmission, and distribution of electricity. It is crucial to exchange and use information for performing smart grid applications. However, in reality the exchange of information over multiple networks is unreliable, leading to unpredictable network Quality-of-Service and thus unreliable smart grid applications. What’s worse, there are massive data, including metering data and measurement data, structured or unstructured, making it challenging to exploit useful information. Hence, there is an urgent need to solve the research problem: how to coordinate multiple networks to reliably transmit data, and then manage ICT system resources to efficiently extract useful information for supporting smart grid applications? TESTBED is a major interdisciplinary project that combines wisdoms in three academic disciplines - Electronics Engineering, Power Engineering and Computing Sciences, to address the aforesaid problem. The main focus is on improving the communication layer interoperability and the efficiency of data analytic. Regarding the communication layer interoperability, this project intends to develop and evaluate function-driven communication frameworks. Moreover, this project will develop and verify new data integration and analytic techniques for enhancing power grid operations. These developed frameworks and methods will be extensively tested and evaluated in 4 well-equipped Laboratories at HWU, EPRI, ICCS, and CAS. They will not only support the SGAM Framework, but also complement and enhance International Standards. Overall, the main objective of this project is to coordinate the action of 5 Universities and 3 enterprises, working in the field of ICT and smart grid from both EU and China, to build and test sophisticated ICT, thereby facilitating the successful implementation of smart grid applications.

The lack of interoperability is considered as the most important barrier to achieve the global integration of IoT ecosystems across borders of different disciplines, vendors and standards. Indeed, the current IoT landscape consists of a large set of isolated islands that do not constitute a real internet, preventing the exploitation of the huge potential expected by ICT visionaries. To overcome this situation, VICINITY presents a virtual neighborhood concept, which is a decentralized, bottom-up and cross-domain approach that resembles a social network, where users can configure their set ups, integrate standards according to the services they want to use and fully control their desired level of privacy. VICINITY then automatically creates technical interoperability up to the semantic level. This allows users without technical background to get connected to the vicinity ecosystem in an easy and open way, fulfilling the consumers needs. Furthermore, the combination of services from different domains together with privacy-respectful user-defined share of information, enables synergies among services from those domains and opens the door to a new market of domain-crossing services. VICINITY's approach will be demonstrated by a large-scale demonstration connecting 8 facilities in 7 different countries. The demonstration covers various domains including energy, building automation, health and transport. VICINITY's potential to create new, domain-crossing services will be demonstrated by value added services such as micro-trading of DSM capabilities, AI-driven optimization of smart urban districts and business intelligence over IoT. Open calls are envisioned in the project to integrate further, preferably public, IoT infrastructures and to deploy additional added value services. This will not only extend the scale of VICINITY demonstration, but also efficiently raise the awareness of industrial communities of VICINITY and its capabilities.