Projects

ARSINOE shapes the pathways to resilience by bringing together Systems Innovation Approach (SIA) and Climate Innovation Window (CIW), to build an ecosystem for climate change adaptation solutions. Within the ARSINOE ecosystem, pathways to solutions are co-created and co-designed by stakeholders, who can then select either existing CIW technologies, or technologies by new providers (or a combination) to form an innovation package. ARSINOE applies a three-tier, approach: (a) using SIA it integrates multi-faceted technological, digital, business, governance and environmental aspects with social innovation for the development of adaptation pathways to climate change for specific regions; (b) it links with CIW to form innovation packages by matching innovators with end-users/regions; (c) it fosters the ecosystem sustainability and growth with cross-fertilization and replication across regions and scales, at European level and beyond, using specific business models, exploitation and outreach actions. The ARSINOE approach is show-cased in nine widely varied demonstrators, as a proof-of-concept with regards to its applicability, replicability, potential and efficacy.

Funding Agency: HORIZON 2020, (H2020) – Building a low-carbon, climate resilient future: Research and innovation in support of the European Green Deal
Duration: 01/10/2021-30/09/2025

During the COVID-19 crisis across all countries, the situation of students with disabilities has been one of the most critical due to the need for rapid and radical changes in already complex circumstances. Project SUCCESS ‒ “Supporting success for all – Universal Design Principles in Digital Learning for students with disabilities” ‒ aims to support teachers and caregivers who work with students during lockdowns, when digital tools and distance learning are the only media available for attending classes and interacting with peers.

Funding Agency: ERASMUS+
Duration: 01/03/2021-31/12/2023

In DRUIDNET we first propose a formal dynamical model of the resources, workload and network, that incorporates phenomena met in dynamic systems, such as wireless communications, mobile edge computing datacentres, and network time varying topologies. We also propose a new set of estimators for the workload and resources time varying profiles, which together with the development of a formal hybrid model allow the description of the future behaviour. Moreover, we establish novel resource allocation mechanisms that take into account explicitly service differentiation, QoS/QoE metrics and context-awareness. Our research goes one step further by focusing on the development of control algorithms for cyber-physical systems (CPS),that incorporate resource allocation mechanisms to the decision strategy itself. This new generation of controllers, driven by a co-design philosophy both in the network resource utilization and computing resource utilization, has the potential to cause a quantum leap in many crucial fields in engineering, such as Industry 4.0, collaborative robotics, logistics, and general multi-agent systems. To achieve all these breakthroughs, we utilize and combine tools from Automata and graph theory, machine learning, modern control theory and network theory. 

Funding Agency: General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT)
Duration: 01/08/2020-31/12/2023

This project is a Trans-National Smart Manufacturing Education Hub focusing on advancing Industry 4.0 educational activities at all institutions involved in the programme. Smart-Edu4.0 is working on the design of industry-attuned and accredited new curricula and the adaptation of existing curricula for undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuous professional development (CPD) training programmes. The hub is also working on the development of bespoke CPD leadership programmes to support Industry 4.0 champions within companies. The programmes enable access to knowledge and skills from diverse fields in Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science and Mathematics through partners collaboration, as needed to address the challenges of factories of the future. Specifically, the project i) develops a new international curriculum model in the area of mechatronics for manufacturing, ii) designs new training pathways for the current low skilled manufacturing workforce in order to compete in this rapidly advancing industry, iii) develops a lifelong training pathway for the existing workforce in the manufacturing industry that will enable them to maintain a competitive edge throughout their career. 

Funding Agency: ERASMUS+
Duration: 01/09/2020-31/08/2023

5G-HEART will focus on the evaluation and use of 5G enabling technologies in the vital vertical use-cases of healthcare, transport and aquaculture. In the health area, 5G-HEART will validate pillcams for automatic detection in screening of colon cancer and vital-sign patches with advanced geo-localization as well as 5G AR/VR paramedic services. In the transport area, 5G-HEART will validate autonomous/assisted/remote driving and vehicle data services. Regarding food, focus will be on 5G-based transformation of aquaculture sector. The infrastructure shared by the verticals, will host important innovations: slicing as a service; resource orchestration in access/core and cloud/edge segments with live user environments. Novel applications and devices (e.g. underwater drones, car components, healthcare devices) will be devised. 

Funding Agency: Information Society Technologies, EU, H2020
Duration: 01/06/2019-30/11/2022

The focus of REALISM is placed on the introduction of a novel distributed and scalable solution for efficient resource allocation in the emerging 5G and IoT competitive and distributed environments. We take a rather different approach from the overwhelming body of existing works in terms of the following two aspects: a) Instead of maximizing the Quality of Service (QoS) which is generally energy costly, we evangelize that better energy-efficiency is achieved by targeting satisfactory QoS levels only. This will be treated by a game theoretical solution concept referred to as satisfaction equilibrium; b) The theory used so far has not managed to properly address the fact that individuals in real life do not behave as neutral expected utility maximizers, but they tend to exhibit risk seeking or loss aversion behavior under uncertainty. To deal with this challenge, we will exploit Prospect Theory. We further complement the realism of our novel resource allocation paradigm in wireless networks, by integrating learning approaches in the considered games to reduce the impact of wireless environment dynamicity, as well as the lack of detailed knowledge or complete information about the actions of the rest of the users.

Funding Agency: Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.)
Duration: 01/12/2019-31/12/2022

COSMOS project aims to design and test an IoT-enabled application for smart touristic areas capitalizing on the NFV/SDN facilities and functionalities of 5GINFIRE. Visitors exploit the image processing capabilities of their portable devices (Raspberry PIs and 360-degree cameras) and servers at the edge of the network, to retrieve useful information for nearby Points of Interests (PoIs). To realize this, within the context of COSMOS, we will enable the dynamic offloading of processing workloads from mobile devices to edge clouds, and quantify the timescales at which such services (i.e., in the form of VNF chains) can be deployed and scaled. A user mobility prediction algorithm will estimate the incoming requests and facilitate the accurate design of VNF chains. Network service descriptors (NSD) will be generated and uploaded to Open Source MANO (OSM) via the 5GINFIRE portal for image/video processing offload to MEC servers. A workload profiling tool will provide state-space models that describe the dynamic operation of the VNFs and compute various operating points against the workload fluctuations. The resource description of these operation points will be included in the network service descriptors, enabling the dynamic deployment of the VNF chain and the scale -in/out in the 5GINFIRE infrastructure. 

Funding Agency: Information Society Technologies, EU, H2020
Duration: 01/03/2019-31/08/2019

GÉANT is Europe’s leading collaboration on network and related infrastructure and services for the benefit of research and education, contributing to Europe’s economic growth and competitiveness. The organisation develops, delivers and promotes advanced network and associated e-infrastructure services, and supports innovation and knowledge-sharing amongst its members, partners and the wider research and education networking community. It currently reaches over 50 million users at 10 000 institutions across Europe, and more than 100 countries worldwide. The EU-funded GN4-3 is the third specific grant agreement under a framework partnership agreement (FPA) between the GÉANT Consortium and the European Commission. It aims to help take European research to the next level, promoting scientific excellence, access and re-use of research data.

Funding Agency: H2020-EU – EXCELLENT SCIENCE – Research Infrastructures
Duration: 01/01/2019-31/12/2022

ACROSS project aims at evaluating, demonstrating, and further evolving a novel resource control mechanism for Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) based on Markov Random Fields (MRF) concept and Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology, and inspired by the principles of autonomic cross-layered protocol stacks, while utilizing the capabilities of the ORCA federation. Among ACROSS’s primary goals is to enable application of the proposed MRF-based decision-making methodology in real scenarios, and exploit the benefits of diverse testing features provided by ORCA for facilitating the realization of flexible, optimized and efficient wireless networks of the Future Internet paradigms. ACROSS will utilize ORCA facilities for a multitude of purposes, including the study of the impact of primary network users on secondary SDR-based CRNs, the effect of physical layer parameters of SDR devices on the proposed cross-layer mechanism, and eventually increase the TRL of our framework bringing it closer to industrial adoption. 

Funding Agency: Information Society Technologies, EU, H2020
Duration: 01/06/2018-30/11/2018

MESON aims at: (i) the design and prototype implementation of a new network slicing architecture that will provide faster and safer access to network functions and content dispersed across multiple slices, and (ii) the development of techniques for the dynamic placement of slice components for faster reactions to sudden load variations. Given the incentives for collaboration among Virtual Network Operators (VNOs), MESON will develop mechanisms for inter-slice communication, based on peering agreements established between the VNOs (similar to the peering agreements of Internet Service Providers). Inter-slice communication will go beyond content access, enabling applications to utilize functions and services deployed across multiple slices in order to improve their performance and/or security.

Funding Agency: General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT)
Duration: 01/10/2018-31/10/2021