News & Events

  • January 20, 2023

The HORIZON Europe Project “Field Trials beyond 5G (FIDAL)” Kick-off

From January 17th to 19th, the Horizon Europe Project FIDAL, short for “Field Trials beyond 5G”, held its physical kick-off meeting in Athens, Greece. This 36-month project is funded under stream D of the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU), aiming to explore and demonstrate 5G/6G technologies by implementing large-scale trials and pilots.

Dr. Loizos Christofi, eBOS R&D Director and Dr. Charalambos Klitis, R&D Technical Project Manager at eBOS, participated in the kick-off meeting, which was chaired by Dr. Ioannis Markopoulos, representing NOVA, as the coordinator of the project. The meeting was attended by the 19 consortium partners and included the partner’s presentation of the vision and objectives, as well as an overview of the overall project expectations based on the guidelines of the European Commission’s Project Officer. During the meeting, the main focus was on the project’s work plan, challenges and risks identified and its implementation schedule.

The evolution of 5G will merge the physical and virtual worlds along with the integration of high-resolution sensing, geolocation, and wireless technologies. These will enable a new level of digital services and link human senses with ambient and remote data. Beyond 5G (B5G) networks are expected to provide ultra-high speeds, ultra-high capacity, ultra-low latency, ultra-multi-terminal connections, and ultra-low power consumption. Combined with an expansion of connectivity into the sea, air, and space, B5G would have the power to positively impact the society. Advanced, Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven functions are planned for the management plane, enhanced access to slicing and support for reconfigurability, as well as deeper integration of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC). Moreover, the evolution of 5G will provide additional support to the new vertical domains, such as the Extended Reality (XR), and further enhance the Quality of Experience (QoE) of existing services by facilitating new business models.

FIDAL is targeting the augmentation of human capabilities, allowing vertical industry players to perform advanced technological and business validation in large-scale field trials of highly innovative and advanced applications that exploit B5G technologies. FIDAL is expected to provide extensive and valuable feedback to the broader industry, academia, innovators, and community before the wide commercial deployments of B5G networks throughout Europe.

eBOS as the Quality and Risk Manager of the project will:

  • Monitor the project’s progress to ensure that proactive measures are taken to mitigate risks that could jeopardise the planned project outcomes.
  • Establish and implement a set of Quality Assurance procedures to be followed by the Consortium.
  • Make sure all project outcomes and Deliverables are of high quality, submitted on time, and in alignment with the project scope.

Furthermore, eBOS will support the design and development of an AIaaS module oriented to support intelligent experimentation regarding vertical deployment on the network.

eBOS will also contribute to the evaluation, deployment, and integration of the various testbeds and large-scale infrastructure components of the project during the large-scale trials and the Open Call trials.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.