Content

CONTENT will focus on developing next generation high capacity end-to-end, heterogeneous infrastructure technologies to support the network of the future. The model proposed will be based on the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) paradigm and provide a technology platform interconnecting geographically distributed IT resources that can support a variety of Cloud services. This platform will include an advanced multi-technology network infrastructure, through which IT resources are shared by multiple operators and service providers and accessed remotely on an on-demand basis. The network solution will be based on the integration of next-generation wireless access and optical access-metro network technologies.

CONTENT will focus on a hybrid wireless solution based on WiFi and LTE and a WDM access-metro network with frame-based sub wavelength switching granularity, incorporating active nodes that also support backhauling of the wireless access network. To support the IaaS paradigm, CONTENT will adopt the concept of physical resources virtualization across the technology domains involved. Virtualization will facilitate sharing of physical resources among various virtual operators, introducing new business models and enabling new exploitation opportunities for the underlying physical infrastructures.

The CONTENT consortium comprises a unique combination of the required technical expertise, with high complementarities in skills as well as balanced industrial and academic participation to achieve this objective.

 Project's website: http://content-fp7.eu/

CoopLab

Cooperative communications constitute a new access scheme that tends to substitute traditional contention schemes for accessing the medium. The idea is to exploit the broadcast nature of wireless networks through retransmission of overhead information towards the destination, aiming at better performance as a result of spatial diversity. Initial research results are very promising, but are solely based on information theoretic models and simulations. These models involve simplifying assumptions and raise concerns as for the efficiency of the scheme in a real environment.

In CoopLab we plan to implement representative cooperative scenarios and study their performance in real-life wireless testbeds. The experiments will take place in already existing wireless testbeds of the partners. These will be federated under a common management frameworks and a special component of this framework will be developed to support experimentation in cooperative communications.

Project's website: http://cooplab-ict.eu/

CREW

The main target of FP7-CREW is to establish an open federated test platform, which facilitates experimentally-driven research on advanced spectrum sensing, cognitive radio and cognitive networking strategies in view of horizontal and vertical spectrum sharing in licensed and unlicensed bands. The CREW platform incorporates 5 individual wireless testbeds incorporating diverse wireless technologies (heterogeneous ISM, heterogeneous licensed, cellular, wireless sensor, heterogeneous outdoor) augmented with State-of-the-Art cognitive sensing platforms.

The CREW project started in October 2010 with a consortium of 7 partners. In July 2011, an eighth partner joined. To extend the use of the federated testbeds to external researchers, two open calls were organized. The second open call closed on October 3, at 17:00 Brussels time. The CREW project received 21 proposals, (co-)submitted by 24 proposers.

After a thorough review process by external independent reviewers, it was found that the quality of most proposals was good to very good. Among the 4 proposals that can receive funding as a result of the second open call, the proposal of University of Thessaly (GR) was selected first among the 21 submissions.

Project's website: http://www.crew-project.eu/