CDTI is a Business Public Entity under the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities that promotes innovation and technological development of Spanish companies. This is the entity that engages applications assistance and support R&D&I projects of Spanish companies at national and international level.

Therefore, the aim of CDTI is to contribute to the improvement of the technological level of Spanish companies through the development of the following activities:

› Technical and economic evaluation and awarding of public aid to innovation through subsidies or aid partly refundable R&D projects developed by companies.

› Management and promotion of the Spanish participation in international programmes for technology cooperation.

› Promotion of the international transfer of technology and business support services to technological innovation.

› Support for the establishment and consolidation of technology-based enterprises.

The bulk of its infrastructure is in Madrid but, in addition, CDTI offers to Spanish companies a strategic network of offices and representatives abroad (SOST OFFICES – Spain Office of Science and Technology), specifically in Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco and USA, to support them in their technology activities abroad.

News on Funding in Spain

CDTI launches its first INNOGLOBAL Call with FEDER (European Regional Development Fund) funds to reinforce the support in International Cooperation projects labelled from January to October 2025. Projects labelled under CELTIC-NEXT Spring Call 2025 are eligible for this Call. The beneficiaries are Spanish SMEs and mid-caps (up to 500 employees). Subcontracting is possible (not mandatory) up to 50% (70% in Health sector).

Spanish companies that belong to the eligible regions (Andalusia, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Valencian Community, Extremadura, Galicia, and Murcia) will be able to benefit with grants up to 80% of the budget.

The fundable activities are industrial research and/or experimental development. The eligible costs include personnel, instruments / material, subcontracting, general expenses, audit, travel and indirect costs. The minimum budget is €175,000 per company/project. The projects must start in 2025 and end by June 30, 2028, at the latest.

INNOGLOBAL opens from May till June 2025. An international funding request (EUREKA funding request in case of CELTIC-NEXT) will be required before applying.

For the rest of the non-eligible regions, CDTI offers a mix of loan and grants under the “Proyectos de Cooperación Tecnológica Internacional” funding line.

CELTIC Spanish successful project 5G-PERFECTA

5G-PERFECTA project is a good example of CELTIC-NEXT success, which aim 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. The project has contributed to the analysis of the 5G performance, the supervision of 5G networks, technologies for monitoring 5G networks, supervision of services and applications as well as 5G monitoring and measurement devices.

The project has developed a 5G performance compliance testing assurance solution that calculates KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to show the real behaviour of 5G network and services. In addition, 5G-PERFECTA has developed automated processes, tools and mechanisms ensuring 5G service quality based on data processing and analytics approaches, under 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. The following figure shows the project scenarios and use cases.

In addition, 5G-PERFECTA has developed a monitoring platform to deliver real measurements over the new generation mobile networks, tested on a real infrastructure. These performance indicators are helping to determine the suitability of new mobile infrastructure, including 5G to support next generation applications in mobility.

The project, led by Minsait, has benefited greatly from a well-balanced consortium, involving 5G operators, vendors and system integrators with small and medium-sized enterprises and academia from Spain, Sweden, Türkiye, Portugal and Poland.

The overall quality is perceived as high objectively measured by the amount of valuable contributions outside the project group (86) to the technology related to 5G-PERFECTA, in which the main innovations have been transferred: 44 papers in most relevant international journals symposiums and conferences (IEEE ISCC, IEEE INFOCOM, JCOMSS, IEEE Access, IEEE Transactions, Elsevier Measurement, etc.); 10 contributions to standardization bodies (ITU-T, VQEG and TM Forum); 10 PhD theses & Master theses; and 22 other exhibitions, dissemination events and activities.

5G-PERFECTA project has received the CELTIC-NEXT Excellence Award for Services and Applications in 2024.

5G-PERFECTA wins the 2024 CELTIC-NEXT Excellence Award for Services and Applications.

Conclusion/Outlook

Spain has strongly supported CELTIC programme since it started in 2003. Telecommunications sector in Spain has an experienced and high added value community at national and international level.

CDTI strengthens its support to CELTIC programme with FEDER INNOGLOBAL Calls. Participants of CELTIC Spring Call 2025 can benefit from the FEDER INNGLOBAL Call 2025.

Further information

› CDTI website – https://www.cdti.es/en
› 5G-PERFECTA – http://www.5gperfecta.eu/