How Austria supports CELTIC-NEXT projects

The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)

Michael Walch
Eureka National Project Coordinator
Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)

The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) is the one-stop shop national funding agency for industrial research and development in Austria. All FFG activities aim to strengthen Austria as a research and innovation centre on the global market. Thus, the FFG helps to assure jobs and wealth sustainably as well as to make a lasting contribution to the strength of the Austrian economy.

The FFG is wholly owned by the Republic of Austria and subsidized by the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK) and the Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs (BMDW). As a provider of innovation enabling services, the FFG is also active on behalf of other national and international institutions.

Involvement in Eureka and CELTIC-NEXT

As part of its activities, FFG supports Eureka as an initiative to encourage collaboration between organisations across Europe and beyond in the near-market development of new and innovative advanced technology products, processes and services. With this strong market orientation, Eureka complements
the EU’s strategic research programmes. The flexible Eureka programmes offer multiple opportunities for SMEs, large companies, ­universities and research organisations.

Eureka Clusters like CELTIC-NEXT are industry-led initiatives that focus on technology areas of strategic interest. Projects are driven by communities of large companies, SMEs, universities, research institutions and end users. The aim is to promote development of new products and applications through networking and to strengthen the European economy on the world market.

FFG actively supports CELTIC-NEXT and provides the required funding to Austrian companies, in line with the distributed ­public-private partnership model that ­Eureka clusters employ. Likewise, FFG funding schemes play an important role in generating new knowledge, developing new products and services, and enhancing competitiveness in the global marketplace. They make it easier, or possible, to finance innovative projects, and help to absorb the risks involved in research.

Information about the process for submitting a successful project proposal and funding conditions in Austria can be found on the FFG’s CELTIC-NEXT page at: https://www.ffg.at/europa/eureka/cluster/celtic-plus

Case study – CELTIC project ASUA

A good example of a successful CELTIC project with Austrian participation is ASUA, a collaboration between 8 consortium partners from 5 countries dedicated to Advanced Sensing for Urban Automation. The research work of the two Austrian consortium partners Geodata Ziviltechnikergesellschaft and Montanuniversität Leoben included the development of a system for the introduction of Smart City technologies in urban tunnel construction. The system called UrbMics is composed of (i) a multifunction box (UrbMics box) for local storage, intelligent processing and wireless transmission of monitoring data of a tunnel construction site, (ii) a wireless sensor network (UrbMics WSN) as well as (iii) an associated web-based information and control center (UrbMics center) to control the multifunction boxes and manage their ­data. In the project, the components have been specified, planned, developed, implemented and tested and validated on an ongoing, urban tunnel construction site. For this, Smart City application scenarios defined within the framework of the CELTIC project have been designed and implemented. The UrbMics platform is integrated into an ASUA reference platform and has also been used by other CELTIC project partners to validate their technologies.


Figure 1: Two UrbMics box field prototypes prepared for construction site installation, left: with, right: without built-in UrbMics WSN components).

The Austrian end result are operational prototypes of the systems UrbMics box, UrbMics WSN and UrbMics center and field tests of the prototypes.


Figure 2: Integration of the UrbMics overall system into the UARP (Urban Automation Reference Platform).


Figure 3: Web interface of the UrbMics center, map showing 3 UrbMics boxes and 6 sensor positions).

Outlook

Austria, as one of the founding members of Eureka, takes over the chairmanship of the network in 2020/2021 and will pave the road “Towards a New Eureka”. Accordingly, in the upcoming year the network will prioritise the further development of Eureka’s programmes, global outreach and internal cooperation. All core activities of the Austrian Chairmanship are built around the celebration of 35 years of Eureka. Thereby, one of the important topics is the revitalization of the Eureka Clusters. The goal is to renew the successful Eureka Clusters model to provide the best opportunities for global RDI in the time to come. Likewise, at FFG we look ahead to a bright future with CELTIC-NEXT and the projects generated in this programme.

› Further information

› FFG website – https://www.ffg.at/en

› CELTIC project ASUA – https://www.celticnext.eu/project-asua/

5G-PERFECTA

5G and next generation mobile performance compliance testing assurance

Antonio Cuadra-Sánchez
Indra Minsait

The 5G-PERFECTA project has developed a 5G performance compliance testing assurance solution that measures the KPIs to show the real behavior of 5G network and services.

The challenge of CELTIC-NEXT project 5G-PERFECTA has been to develop the technology to assure the 5G service quality based on data processing, that is, to guarantee that the quality of 5G networks is aligned with the expectations of bandwidth, latency and other key performance indicators. A series of innovation activities have been settled in order to establish a reference architecture for supervising 5G networks by means of monitoring techniques that measure 5G performance indicators to evaluate the real performance of 5G networks. The consortium, led by Indra Minsait, gathers 16 partners from Industry & Telco, Research Centers, Academia and SMEs of Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.

Motivation

The 5G infrastructure will deliver solutions, architectures, technologies and standards for the ubiquitous 5G communication infrastructures of the next decade. The following parameters are indicative of the new network characteristics to be achieved at an operational level: 10 times to 100 times higher typical user data rate and End-to-End latency of < 1ms. This new high-performance network needs to be effectively tested to assure that 5G technology is actually offered with high quality levels. For this purpose, we have developed a 5G performance compliance testing assurance solution that calculates KPI (Key Performance Indicators) to show the real behavior of 5G network and services. In addition, we have developed automated processes, tools and mechanisms ensuring 5G service quality, based on data processing and analytics approaches.

Scenarios and use cases

We have defined two main project scenarios and six use cases. The 5G Network Performance scenario provides the performance monitoring information and includes the testbed and measurement scope for 5G network performance analysis. The 5G Quality Assurance scenario provides the quality of service monitoring information, including the time-sensitive networking mechanisms, the deployment of critical services with performance guarantees, and the QoS observability for 5G. See in figure 1 the project scenarios and use cases.


5G-PERFECTA scenarios and use cases

Impact

The 5G performance compliance testing assurance solution will help the digital providers (operators, service providers, applications providers, etc.) to evaluate how next generation services are performed on the 5G networks for different purposes: measuring of 5G network performance, validating the services on 5G networks, monitoring the QoS and QoE, launching of new applications, etc. In addition, there is a very strong focus on end users in 5G PERFECTA, since they are the ones who really benefit from the correct behaviour of the 5G network. For this purpose, we have considered the end-user perspective in the analysis of the performance of services on 5G networks.

Conclusion

The project will provide capabilities that improve efficiency in content delivery by means of user-oriented quality assurance capabilities, which will be able to impact a significant part of the 5G revenues expected for the following years. The outcomes of this project will allow network and service providers to deploy the right 5G infrastructure to run the most advanced video technology business cases before final 5G standardization is complete.

5G-PERFECTA will provide a monitoring platform that delivers real measurements of several new feasible services over the new generation networks, including beyond 4G and the 5G network, tested on a real infrastructure. These performance indicators will allow to determine the suitability of new mobile infrastructures, including 5G to support next generation applications in mobility, such as remote driving, medical care, logistics, retail, Smart Cities, Industry 4.0, etc.

You can find more information on 5G-PERFECTA at https://www.celticnext.eu/project-5g-perfecta/.

Public Authorities

This project has been co-funded in Spain by the Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial (CDTI), in Sweden by Vinnova, in Portugal by Portugal 2020, in Poland by Narodowe Centrum Badań i Rozwoju and in Turkey by Tübitak.

More synergies and global cooperation in Eureka

Interview with Eureka Chairman Ulrich Schuh

On 1st July, Austria took over the Eureka Chairmanship for one year – already for the second time in the 35-year history of Eureka. The ambitious motto of the Austrian Chairmanship is ‘‘Towards a New Eureka’’. CELTIC News editor Milon Gupta asked Eureka Chairman Ulrich Schuh from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), which hosts the Chairmanship on behalf of the Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs, about the am­bitions and plans behind this motto.

Which challenges and opportunities do you see for Eureka today and tomorrow?

U. Schuh: Since the foundation of Eureka, the world has changed fundamentally and also the conditions for international cooperation in the field of innovation. Eureka faces the challenge that member countries currently have a wide set of opportunities at hand that allow the support of innovative companies at European and global level. So Eureka has to prove its added value. At the same time, the model of Eureka that is based on the principle of variable geometry and a decentralised ­organisation is more modern than ever. This has allowed Eureka to become a truly global organisation with 47 countries in its network.

What are the main priorities of the ­Austrian Eureka Chairmanship?

U. Schuh: The Austrian Chairmanship is guided by the slogan ‘New Eureka’, which is also the headline of the new Strategic Roadmap approved during the last Dutch Chairmanship. We have three priorities. First, new instruments will be launched during this year: the new Eurostars Partnership with the European Commission and especially the New Clusters Programme. Second, Austria will intensify and enlarge global cooperation within Eureka. We are proud to welcome Singapore to our network during our Chairmanship. Third, we will improve our services for our stakeholders and want to encourage all ­Eureka countries to be even more engaged
in the activities of our network.

Which enhanced roles do you anticipate for the current Eureka Clusters in the new Eureka Clusters Programme?

U. Schuh: The Clusters are a success story of Eureka, but we have also understood that the potential of the Clusters programme has not yet been fully exploited. In order to boost the impact of the Clusters, we want to increase their visibility to potential stakeholders and
to use synergies to improve efficiency and ­effectiveness. Visibility will be enhanced by synchronised thematic calls developed in cooperation with the existing Cluster communities. Synergies will be realised by the close cooperation of Cluster Communities through a multi-annual strategy and an annual work programme. The synchronised Call on Artificial Intelligence is a first successful pilot in this respect.

How is the involvement of non-Euro­pean countries like Canada and Korea enhancing the Eureka network?

U. Schuh: At its foundation, Eureka allowed Member States of the European Union to benefit from cooperation with EFTA countries in order to establish a Western European alternative in research, development and innovation to global competitors. Meanwhile, Eureka is a truly global organisation with 47 countries. The non-European Eureka countries have proven to be an essential asset of ­
Eureka. Korea became a partner country in 2017; Canada is also very active and has for example initiated the COVID-19 ECHO call in April this year. Also, our other associated countries – South Africa, Chile and Argentina – are reliable partners in the Eureka family.

How should the Eureka programmes add value in the evolving European and global innovation landscape?

U. Schuh: After 35 years the Eureka model of cooperation is more relevant than ever. The most pressing current challenges of countries in Europe and all over the world are the
COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. It is understood that these challenges cannot be solved at local, regional, national or even at European level. Here, global cooperation is ­inevitable, and this is true especially in the field of technology, where solutions have to be developed. Whenever two companies from two different countries are developing an R&D project, Eureka is the most suitable platform to support this initiative. We have the infrastructure in place, the available funding, efficient procedures, and via the Globalstars programme we reach out all around the world far beyond our current 47 countries.

Relaunch of CELTIC-NEXT in revised Eureka Clusters Programme

Ambitious roadmap for 2021 – 2025


Xavier Priem
Director CELTIC Office

CELTIC-NEXT has been relaunched with a new, ambitious roadmap as part of the revised Eureka Clusters Programme. The relaunch is very timely in a world of dramatic change that requires novel ICT solutions addressing the economic, societal, and environmental challenges the Eureka member states and the world as a whole are facing.

The revised Eureka Clusters Programme

The CELTIC-NEXT Cluster application for the four-year period 2021-2025 was accepted, together with the Multi-Annual Plan for the Eureka Clusters, on 18th June 2021. This concluded a relaunch process that had started in June 2020. The new Eureka Clusters model is meant to encourage industry-wide collaboration and the forming of new innovation ecosystems. The revised Eureka Clusters Programme aims to align and synchronise the Clusters’ processes.

Since June 2020, the Eureka Clusters had already intensified their joint and synchronised activities, most visibly through two jointly organised AI calls in 2020 and 2021, which both mobilised a substantial number of excellent project proposals.


Topical areas of the CELTIC-NEXT Roadmap 2021–2025

Updated CELTIC-NEXT roadmap for 2021 – 2025

The theme of CELTIC-NEXT for the new period is: “Next-Generation Communications for a secured, trusted, and sustainable digital society”. All topics identified in the strategic roadmap of CELTIC-NEXT for the 2021–2025 period have been aligned under this theme. These topics are neither comprehensive nor prescriptive. In line with the bottom-up approach of CELTIC-NEXT, projects are free to explore any subject, as long as it is related to ICT and telecommunications.

A core part of the roadmap relates to the evolution of communication networks. The roadmap identifies the ongoing digitisation and automation of many aspects of our lives as fundamental drivers for transforming the communications network architecture and functionality. The shift to automation of everything is driven by current enabling technology trends like cloud-based services with dynamic, adaptive scaling, extensive virtualisation, novel software-defined automated solutions and ever-increasing wireless connectivity with a great promise of 5G, Beyond 5G, and the nascent 6G, and will require a redefinition of networking concepts and a new digital infrastructure involving radical shifts in technologies, architectures and business models to meet future digital needs.

The roadmap highlights a number of important trends and requirements expected to shape the projects and results of the CELTIC-NEXT Cluster in the coming years, including: pervasiveness, almost infinite network capacity, imperceptible latency, tera-scale things, cognitive operations, and perpetual protection.

Addressing the digital needs will require significant changes in network architecture and technology. Nine dimensions are identified in the roadmap towards an end-to-end convergent network architecture: 1. Massive-scale access, 2. Converged edge cloud, 3. Smart network fabric, 4. Universal adaptive core, 5. Programmable network operating system, 6. Network slicing, 7. Augmented cognition systems, 8. Digital value platforms, and 9. Dynamic data security.

Further related areas of the roadmap beyond communication networks in the narrow sense include: cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and big data, ICT solutions for sustainability, ICT-enabled health and wellness, new solutions for consumption and production, smart cities and smart territories, smart transport, smart energy, smart agriculture, smart home and smart building, digital enterprise and digital education, content, entertainment and gaming, fintech, and digital life services.

Many of the topics identified in the roadmap go across several Eureka Clusters, which is intentional, as ICT is at the core of innovation in all vertical sectors. In line with the concept of the revised Cluster Programme, CELTIC-NEXT will use these cross-Cluster topics as opportunities for creating synergies and increasing impact across the whole programme. Only in this way can CELTIC-NEXT and the other Clusters in the programme continue delivering top-level industry-driven innovations addressing the needs of economy, society and environment. In line with this cross-Cluster collaboration spirit, CELTIC-NEXT is one of three Core Technologies Clusters, together with partner Clusters ITEA (software) and Xecs (hardware). As a Pillar Cluster, CELTIC-NEXT supports the two more application-based Clusters EUROGIA2020 (low-carbon energy technologies) and SMART (manufacturing).

Excellence targets

CELTIC-NEXT has defined a set of excellence targets in order to keep its activities focused on achieving substantial measurable impacts. These targets are divided into three areas:

1. Technical excellence targets
› Accelerate the deployment and take-up of new advanced end-to-end ICT services, employing the new network concepts of 5G and leading to the implementation of 6G in Europe
› Actively facilitate the adoption of those ICT technologies by all targeted Verticals into their communities, business models and processes

2. Economic excellence targets
› Consolidate the position of European ICT manufacturers and service providers within Europe and on the global market
› Contribute to all Eureka Communities tackling the technological and socio-economic challenges in a holistic way by considering the end-to-end perspective of new communications solutions

3. Societal and environmental excellence targets
› Investigate where advanced communications can reduce carbon footprints for many vertical sectors
› Assist European nations and industry to access the societal benefits and returns of being at the forefront of the new digital society
› Consolidate the European sovereignty in ICT technologies and services as well as other critical infrastructures relying on ICT infrastructures, like the Energy Grid

These targets are highly ambitious and require close collaboration between the private and the public sector. The revised Eureka Clusters Programme provides the structure and the ecosystem to achieve them.

VIRTUOSE

Virtualized video services

Serhan Gül
Fraunhofer HHI

Mehmet Dagli
Netas

Tiia Ojanperä
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd.

The motivation for CELTIC project VIRTUOSE was to develop video services that are scalable, secure and easily deployable on different computing platforms. This was achieved by using cloud computing and virtualization techniques for deployment of video services in order to realize different core use cases.

The three-year project (2016-2019) contributed to several R&D areas in the context of the core use cases. VIRTUOSE was a joint undertaking of 19 industrial and research partners from five European countries: Finland, Germany, Romania, Spain and Turkey. Nokia was the project coordinator and VTT the technical coordinator in VIRTUOSE.

Approach

The four core use cases studied during the project were: cloud gaming, multiparty video communications, video transcoding & distribution, and video analytics. These video services benefitted from virtualized components and a common system architecture, allowing easy and dynamic video service deployment and scaling. Within the work areas, several sub-use cases were analysed and their implementations showcased in the form of demonstrators.

Novel cloud computing techniques, consisting of virtualization solutions, such as KVM, and Linux containers, such as Docker and LXC, were used to containerize the video services. Rancher was deployed to manage containerized service instances. In this manner, the VIRTUOSE architecture is able to ­offer solutions to the trade-off between ­distribution of the computation and locali­zation of the data, as well as making the source code portable to different virtualized platforms.


The figure shows the applicationes targeted by VIRTUOSE and a common framework for their realization.

Achieved results

The main results of the VIRTUOSE project include a common architecture for the different core use cases and virtualized components for video coding, analysis and streaming that can be easily deployed, maintained and scaled using lightweight containers. The project advanced the state-of-the-art through several algorithmic and system-level contributions in different domains.

For the cloud gaming use case, a low-­latency video encoder was developed using a low-complexity approach called logarithmical hopping encoding (LHE). The implementation was published as open source and integrated in the popular multimedia framework FFmpeg. For the video transcoding & distribution use case, Docker was used to containerize different video services and showcase a scenario where a video service provider sets up a new video distribution service for end users. In the developed demonstrator, video is transcoded in real-time, streamed over a content delivery network (CDN), and accessed with a HbbTV compatible set-top box. Virtualizing different components of the processing and transmission chain significantly advanced the flexibility, time to market and scalability of video-on-demand (VoD) services.

For the multiparty video communications, a new motion adaptive layer selection algorithm was developed, which provides continuous video delivery and highly increased quality of experience (QoE), especially on high motion activity video streams. Furthermore, an adaptive approach was ­adopted, in which containers for video conferencing services are scaled based on the number of participants. Efforts in the video analysis were focused on the development of low-complexity algorithms and approaches based on neural networks that provide high accuracy. Specifically, an object tracking algorithm was developed that operates ­directly on compressed video data, and a new approach for object detection was developed that allows weakly-supervised training using transfer learning and synthetically generated training data. Several analysis algorithms were integrated into a virtualized platform for camera-based vehicle management in challenging parking lot environments.

Live demonstrators were showcased in both project-specific and public events. The VIRTUOSE consortium also actively disseminated the results in scientific, industrial and standardization forums.

Conclusion

VIRTUOSE contributed to several R&D areas, ranging from computing, telecommunication and image processing to artificial intelligence and neural networks, thanks to the wide coverage of the considered use cases. Development of a new low-latency video encoder for cloud gaming, VoD service streaming through CDN by using virtualized components for ­video encoding and distribution, introduction of a new motion adaptive layer selection algorithm for video conferencing and low complexity algorithms based on neural networks for video analysis were the main achievements. The project also conducted successful demonstration, dissemination and exploitation activities, including scientific and technical papers, patents applications, master and PhD studies and participation to a number of events and exhibitions.

› Further information

› VIRTUOSE project page – http://www.tut.fi/virtuose/

4KREPROSYS

4K ultra-HD TV wireless remote production systems

Anthony Convers
HEIG-VD/REDS

Romuald Mosqueron
HEIG-VD/REDS

Marco Mattavelli
SCI-STI-MM/EPFL

The CELTIC project 4KREPROSYS developed a new integrated cost-effective approach for the production of 4K TV content. The solution is capable of covering the needs from indoor studio production up to difficult mobile outdoor production at large events. High-performance video compression for low-bandwidth usage, remote production capabilities and “all-IP” connectivity are the principle of the solution.

The production system was built by ­developing an integrated IP-based wireless system that can be used in the event production venues to capture audio-visual ­content in HD and Ultra-High Definition (UHD), including High Dynamic Range (HDR) formats ideal for covering large-scale sporting events, which require high outdoor ­mobility, with state-of-the-art image quality.

Main goals

The evolution of multimedia content and ­associated services towards improved user experience must rely on higher resolutions and more immersive and interactive formats. However, this is only possible if the production of such contents is economically viable and fully compatible and scalable with the production of traditional content formats. Previous production technologies and systems were the results of an “ad-hoc patchwork” of different components based on often non-compatible or non-appropriate legacy technologies that need to be integrated with difficulties and deployed in the field with very heavy and costly logistic means. New emerging and powerful technologies such as MPEG HEVC video compression, Internet/IP based wired and wireless connectivity with high bandwidth and low latencies, provided the motivation to re-think and re-design the essential components of TV content production infrastructures in a unified integrated ­approach.

The project focused its investigations and developments on the integration of MPEG HEVC and IP-based communications carrying content and service signals for both wireless and wired production components. The goals were to study, develop and experiment in the field production systems that support high performance (i.e. very high bitrates) for high-quality UHD and advanced multi-view formats, including high robustness for reaching high levels of reliability for indoor and highly mobile outdoor settings. Major challenges were to implement very powerful processing systems in compact and battery-operated assemblies. Moreover, the systems were required to answer to the new location approach of the TV studio infrastructure, ­traditionally deployed in the field, which is becoming a “virtual” component that can be locally or remotely deployed according to the best logistic (i.e. economical) solution for the specific production operation.


New HEVC low-delay wireless system used during FIFA world cup

Approach

The technologies developed to design the new 4K production systems are:

› Ultra-low latency MPEG HEVC encoding and decoding (the only compression standard that provides the necessary performance to compress 4K TV signals to reasonable bitrates with full studio quality).

› Low-latency IP-based wired and wireless communication links for local and remote production for both audio-video UHD and service signals.

› Low latency switching and synchronization of compressed streams without packet loss for the mixing and multiplexing of wired and wireless content and service streams.

› Low-latency content protection for on-line encryption of compressed streams.

Main results

The new audio-video codecs and wireless transmitters developed by the project made possible to master a complete RF recording & transmission infrastructure supporting 4UHD resolution. Another innovation on the production side was the approach based on integration and transmission of IP signals for both content and services. Multiplexing of audio, video and service data managed at the very beginning of the chain enabled the reduction of the number of frequencies needed for production events. By realizing robust and reliable bi-directional full-IP connectivity, the project has made it possible to deploy production configurations with full remote studio control.

Applied to a post-production distribution chain, the technologies developed in 4KReProSys can also be used for increasing QoE in broadcast services and support new contribution concepts.

Conclusion and outlook

The major result of the project is a fully integrated production system, controlled by a ­remote studio via a low-band width communication infrastructure, for the production of UHD TV resolutions capable of covering highly mobile outdoor sport events. In July 2018, AMP-VISUAL-TV was able to set up and manage with full success the transmission of all wireless 4K cameras used for one month to cover 12 stadiums during the FIFA World Cup event in Russia.

The most visible European business perspective will be the possibility of all television and production companies to profit from the new 4K wireless and all-IP production capabilities associated to the new low-bandwidth remote production possibilities.

For the results achieved, the 4KReProSys consortium won a prestigious European ­distinction, the CELTIC Excellence Award for Multimedia.

› Further information

› 4KReProSys project page – https://www.celticnext.eu/project-4kreprosys/

High number of proposals in ­Eureka Clusters AI Call 2021

The second Eureka Clusters AI Call, which was launched on 1st March, has attracted a high number of project proposals. By the deadline of 28th June, 43 proposals had been submitted. These proposals represent a total commitment of 2,518 person years by international researchers and developers from large enterprises, SMEs, research & technology organisations, and academia.

The aim of this Call is to boost the productivity and competitiveness of European industries through the adoption and use of AI systems and services. 14 Eureka countries have allocated budget to support ground-breaking Artificial Intelligence innovations. The Call has been jointly organised by the following Eureka Clusters: CELTIC-NEXT, EUROGIA, ITEA, PENTA–EURIPIDES, and SMART. For 9 of the submitted proposals, CELTIC-NEXT has been selected as the primary Cluster. For 6 additional proposals, CELTIC-NEXT has been selected as the secondary Cluster. This means that CELTIC-NEXT has been selected in more than a third of the proposals among the 5 Clusters.

The proposals are now being evaluated. Results are expected to be known by the end of September.

› Further information

Eureka Clusters AI Call website – https://eureka-clusters-ai.eu

6 new projects received CELTIC-NEXT label

In the CELTIC-NEXT Spring Call 2021, 10 validated proposals submitted by 12th April 2021 got selected in the evaluation process, and out of them 6 new projects received the CELTIC-NEXT label.

The labelled projects are now eligible for funding by the project partners’ national funding bodies.

The consortia of the six projects include a total number of 76 partner organisations from 12 countries, ranging from leading industry players to SMEs and academic institutions.

The six projects include the following topics:

› 6G for Connected Sky
› Massive IoT over High Density LoRaWan Networks
› Ultra Scalable Wireless Access
› AI-Powered Communication for Health Crisis Management
› Federated AI Platform for Industrial Technologies
› Cloud-based Online Access to Computational Fluid Dynamic Simulations

As soon as the funding for the new projects is confirmed and they are ready to start, each of them will be presented on the CELTIC-NEXT website (www.celticnext.eu).

Health5G

Healthcare Transforming with 5G Wireless Tech


Javier Gavilanes
Experis

Gema Maestro
Experis


Barış Bulut
Enforma, Turkey

The advent of advanced mobile sensing and data processing technologies is a major driver in the transformation of many verticals including the healthcare sector. This shift is further accelerated due to societal changes including ageing populations and increasing global healthcare expenditures.

The three-year CELTIC project Health5G ran from 2019 to 2021, and it successfully aimed to discover healthcare scenarios that could bank on technological advancements especially in 5G mobile technologies.

Eureka Clusters like CELTIC-NEXT traditionally support high technology readiness level (TRL) outcomes. Obtaining results with a successful technology-market fit was ensured by the diverse skillsets of the 26 partners from 6 countries.

Approach

There can be a multitude of scenarios in healthcare. The project team started out by splitting all potential scenarios into three groups:

1. Healthcare at hospital: Advancements in sensing, connectivity, and AI lead to improvements in existing hospital-based patient treatments, resulting in more accurate, personalised, and trackable treatments for patients. Here, we worked on several interesting hospital use case scenarios.

2. Healthcare at home: Technological developments and ageing populations are enabling all patients, especially the elderly and the vulnerable, to be taken care of – not only at hospitals, but also at the comfort of their homes. In Health5G, we addressed this set of scenarios under what we called ‘Healthcare at home’.

3. Emergency healthcare: Ubiquitous connectivity and improved sensing & AI technologies were used in emergency scenarios to improve impacts of first aid and reduce fatalities. The results were studied in Health5G under emergency scenarios.

Such a discrete and upfront split provided a more systematic way by generating unique focal points to the consortium partners. Consequently, all the undertaken work would fit into one of the three categories of healthcare, whereby the pilots would also be designed accordingly.

These scenarios were considered with three different priorities in mind, the three pillars:

1. Patient healthcare: Medical centres and scenarios in which healthcare service is given and/or where healthcare workers are.

2. 5G wireless technology: The combination of several technological layers that leads to a commercial 5G signal, making the services available anywhere at any time to anyone.

3. Healthcare technologies: All the tech companies and researchers that do not necessarily provide healthcare but are the cogs in the healthcare machine, as they provide the underlying applications, data management, and security & privacy technologies.


Illustration of the Health5G conceptual architecture

Achieved results

Typical CELTIC projects deliver results close to market. Hence, creating use cases with a storyline supported by partners in a meaningful value chain was considered key to success. Indeed, Health5G concluded with six country pilots and a seventh demo on the overarching topic of cybersecurity:

› Swedish Country Pilot: Patient Home Care – Integrated Swedish Demonstration
› German Country Pilot: Zero Touch Infrastructure Orchestration for Emergency Services
› Korean Country Pilot: Wireless Patient Monitoring Inside Hospitals
› Turkish Country Pilot: Healthcare at Hospital and at Home
› Spanish Country Pilot: Gait Monitoring System and Automatic Deployer by Experis
› Irish Country Pilot: Wearable Video from Paramedic to Hospital
› Cybersecurity Pilot: Sirena – Security and Cybersecurity Tool

With the addition of smaller scale PoC demonstrations, the project generated 34 public demo videos.

On the exploitation front, Health5G outcomes already started turning into further R&I projects, postgraduate subjects, field trials, or in some cases purchase orders. As for dissemination, the statistics reveal 67 journal and conference papers, 10 conference, session or track organisations, 37 stakeholder value workshops, 2 standardisation contributions, and 5 press releases. So far as standardisation goes, the main emphasis was on compliance. Standards for wireless technologies (5G), security & privacy, and medical devices were carefully studied and understood by the consortium. Of secondary priority, contribution to standards was a topic where preparations were completed for proposing changes to the O-RAN standard.

Conclusion and outlook

During Healht5G, the consortium took valuable steps to reap rewards of 5G wireless technologies and advanced medical applications that rely on ubiquitous sensing and computing. A careful analysis of the needs of patients and healthcare providers will help pave the way for healthcare services of the future.

› Further information

Healht5G project website – https://health5g.eu

Memorandum of Understanding with 6G-IA signed

Collaboration for faster terrestrial and non-terrestrial convergence

                               

On 4th April 2022, Eureka Cluster CELTIC-NEXT and the 6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which aims at establishing synergies and complementary activities in collaborative ICT research. The MoU will help foster economic growth and jobs through coordinated R&D&I activities and the commercial exploitation of generated results. The collaboration aims to leverage the complementarity of 6G-IA and CELTIC-NEXT and build on synergies to maximise the return on investment and to support achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

ICT has become, more than ever, a pillar of sovereignty and resiliency in the rapidly changing social, political and economic environment of today and its regional battlefields. The Russian war against Ukraine as well as the measures against the COVID-19 pandemic have shown how critical it is to count on both terrestrial and non-terrestrial ICT services, as together they constitute one of the critical infrastructures of a country, especially considering the digitalisation of the society and the vertical industries.

Therefore, it is mandatory to increase and leverage to its maximum the European and allied countries’ funding to reach a critical mass of R&D&I and a faster time-to-market for the European countries and their allies’ ICT industry.

This Memorandum of Understanding provides the platform for leveraging on each signatory’s strengths and cooperation, to support sovereignty and resiliency for Europe and allied countries.

The purpose of this MoU is to set out a simple framework where the signatories can identify the complementary nature of their respective objectives and to identify and implement shared activities that benefit both initiatives and contribute to the achievement of their goals.

The signatories aim to leverage the diversity of 6G-IA and CELTIC-NEXT as well as the fact that their projects are somewhat sequential in terms of their Technology Readiness Levels (TLRs), to maximise the return on the respective investments and increase the impact on the Sustainable Development Goals.

The signatories will focus on encouraging cross-programme discussions and workshops on potential technology pathfinders and solutions, with a view to stimulating a pipeline of new projects for both initiatives and sharing reciprocal contributions to each other’s Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) documents.

The focus of the cooperation is to stimulate the respective communities to consider the issues in a holistic way considering the “end-to-end” perspective of the new communications services being enabled by 5G and 6G technologies, as well as developing an understanding of the economic, environmental, and societal benefits.

How the MoU will be implemented

To support the achievement of their common objectives, the signatories intend to:

› Create awareness and promote opportunities for collaboration within and across the respective communities
› Consult mutually on their SRIAs
› Collaborate on the organisation and execution of activities with a view to reaching the common objectives identified
› Participate in and support suitable events organized by the other signatory
› Plan and manage joint activities in areas of common interest in line with the signatories’ respective legal frameworks
› Undertake joint communication, as appropriate
› Leverage their relevant resources and expertise necessary to ensure the success of the common objectives
› Regularly review the effectiveness of this collaboration, with reference to the priorities agreed

Conclusion

This MoU is the second of a series of new collaborations for CELTIC-NEXT. This fulfils the objectives set by CELTIC-NEXT’s Core Group to develop CELTIC-NEXT’s support to and impact for the ICT community by enriching its DNA with new verticals and communities. The 6G-IA community is also eager to collaborate more with the CELTIC ICT community. This MoU offers the perfect playground for both communities to meet and work together on strategic topics and projects.