Ongoing research being developed at the IIoT competence center, fortiss, is focused on networking and computing architectures as basis for an efficient deployment and orchestration of heterogeneous and de-centralized services and resources. Specific aspects concern interoperability aspects, in particular when facing large-scale critical environments with heterogeneous components, such as in Industrial IoT environments. Specific topics: Edge/Fog/cloud computing; semantic behavior to support real-time system adaptation; in-network computing architectures.

New Book "6G Vision for a Sustainable and People-centric Future"

From Communications to Services, the CONASENSE Perspective

August 2023: 6G is currently under definition, often being addressed from a plain telecommunications perspective as an evolutionary paradigm that represents an extension of 5G. Having as its horizon 2030, 6G initiatives are being deployed across the globe, to further ignite the development of 6G services. In its philosophy core, 6G embodies the "human in the loop" principle. The research effort aimed at 6G requires an interdisciplinary approach that ignites discussion across different key technological sectors, ranging from communications to services and business cases.

The contribution of this book to research in the field concerns an evolutionary and interdisciplinary design of 6G as a paradigm that can be addressed by working together the four different computational areas of CONASENSE: communications; satellites and navigation; sensing; services.

This book starts with a perspective on 6G challenges towards sustainability and addressing new business models, moving on to key topics concerning communications. It ends with chapters focusing on 6G service design.

This book is, therefore, envisioned to assist in developing critical thinking to back up novel networking, applications, and services towards 6G.

New Book "Shaping the Future of IoT with Edge Intelligence"

How Edge Computing Enables the Next Generation of IoT Applications 

August 2023: This book presents the technologies that empower edge intelligence, along with their use in novel IoT solutions. Specifically, it presents how 5G/6G, Edge AI, and Blockchain solutions enable novel IoT-based decentralized intelligence use cases at the edge of the cloud/edge/IoT continuum. Emphasis is placed on presenting how these technologies support a wide array of functional and non-functional requirements spanning latency, performance, cybersecurity, data protection, real-time performance, energy efficiency, and more. The various chapters of the book are contributed by several EU-funded projects, which have recently developed novel IoT platforms that enable the development and deployment of edge intelligence applications based on the cloud/edge paradigm. Each one of the projects employs its own approach and uses a different mix of networking, middleware, and IoT technologies. Therefore, each of the chapters of the book contributes a unique perspective on the capabilities of enabling technologies and their integration in practical real-life applications in different sectors. The book is structured in five distinct parts. Each one of the first four parts focuses on a specific set of enabling technologies for edge intelligence and smart IoT applications in the cloud/edge/IoT continuum. Furthermore, the fifth part provides information about complementary aspects of next-generation IoT technology, including information about business models and IoT skills. Specifically:

EU-IoT Review 2020-2023

EU-IoT: Next Generation IoT/Edge-Cloud

May 2023: EU-IoT acts as an accelerator for the whole European IoT ecosystem towards transforming the current IoT community of researchers and innovators in Europe into an  increasingly cohesive, dynamic, participatory and sustainable ecosystem, as an essential part of the Next Generation Internet initiative. It assists stakeholders to engage and create value, as well as set up a self-sustaining European IoT community.

Recommended results in this context:

- D3.8, recommendations on research priorities and innovation strategies towards standardization, https://lnkd.in/e8tpk3F9

- D3.6, mapping of knowledge areas to standardization, https://lnkd.in/eKStmi7n

- D5.7, impact assessment, https://lnkd.in/eSkiMmjr

- NGIoT community event, https://lnkd.in/e4-Z9N4U

- Eu-IoT and OntoCommons Project semantic interoperability workshop, https://lnkd.in/eyU6VJZ7

- EU-IoT/EFPF Hackathon, co-located with CONASENSE 2022, https://lnkd.in/e7cDzQhH

- white paper on success stories and impact of the ICT-56 projects, https://lnkd.in/etmu_PTp

- white paper on smart, decentralised edge, https://lnkd.in/evcdqjCT

and the EU-IoT final book , edited by Rute C. Sofia and John Soldatos soon to appear)

Highly Cited Paper Award - Performance Analysis of IoT Protocols

April 2023: the 2021 paper has received a "Highly Cited Award" of Applied Sciences MDPI!

Paper summary:April 2023: the 2021 paper has received a "Highly Cited Award" of Applied Sciences MDPI!

IoT data exchange is supported today by different communication protocols and communication architectures, each of which with its own advantages and disadvantages, and often co-existing in a way that is mandated by vendor policies. Although different protocols are relevant in different domains, there is not a protocol that provides better performance (jitter, latency, energy consumption) across different scenarios. The focus of this work is two-fold. Firstly, to provide a comparison of the different available solutions, including the Named Data Networking architecture as a relevant example of an Information-centric networking architecture for IoT. Secondly, the work focuses on evaluating three of the most popular protocols used both in Consumer as well as in Industrial IoT environments: MQTT, CoAP, and OPC UA. The experimentation has been carried out first on a local testbed for MQTT, COAP and OPC UA. Then, larger experiments have been carried out for MQTT and CoAP, based on the large-scale FIT-IoT testbed. Results show that CoAP is the protocol that achieves across all scenarios lowest time-to-completion, while OPC UA, albeit exhibiting less variability, resulted in higher time-to-completion in comparison to CoAP or MQTT. 


ns-3 DetNetWiFi Framework @ the Hannover Messe

Mar 2023: the ns-3 DetNetWiFi framework has been presented in the 5G/wireless conference at the Hannover Messe.

Talk here

The ns-3 DetNetWiFi simulation framework integrates Wi-Fi 6/fixed components to simulate multi-AP deterministic environments, facilitating the development of novel mechanisms to support critical applications via Wi-Fi 6. The framework integrates the design and concepts available on the fortiss TSNWiFi open demonstrator, and extends it with new concepts for time synchronization and scheduling for WTSN.

EU-IoT Closing Event: Research Recommendations towards Standardization

Mar 2023: the CSA EU-IoT has presented its final results in March 2023.

Recordings available here

The @fortiss IIoT team has supported the analysis of standardization efforts by ICT-56 RIAs and has also coordinated the impact assessment. it has been a pleasure to work with the six flagship projects in ICT-56,

6G WICE Panel Large-scale Sensing 6G IoT Services towards Society, Challenges and Drivers @ Globecom 2022

December 2022: WICE Panel "Large-scale sensing 6G IoT services towards society, challenges and drivers"

In 2030, 6G is expected to become a reality, just after a decade of 5G learning. 6G integrates different cellular and wireless technologies, proposing to address immersive communication and the use of an “Internet of Everything”, i.e., the application of IoT in a pervasive, continuous way, to further assist societal needs. This panel shall provide a perspective on technical challenges that are being addressed to make 6G a reality, in a way that assists societal development. The international female speakers will address the key challenges and drivers to make 6G deployment a reality in this context.

- Panel 1: "Large-scale Sensing 6G IoT Services Towards Society, Challenges and Drivers"

Moderator: Rute C. Sofia

Invited Panelists: Neeli Prasad, SmartAvatar, NL (IEEE Senior member and Distinguished Lecturer)

Marja Matinmikko-Blue, Oulu Univ, Finland (IEEE member)

Peiying Zhu, Huawei, USA (IEEE Fellow)

Eduardo Cerqueira, Federal University of Pará (UFPA) Brazil (IEEE Member)

DetNetWiFi Project in VDMA Future Manufacturing

October 2022: our fortiss IIoT project appears in the VDMA Future Manufacturing magazine!

DetNetWiFiEdge is a project focused on the integration of deterministic wireless (WiFi 6/7) mechanisms in manufacturing environments. The main purpose of the project is to research and validate mechanisms (time synhronization, co-OFDMA multi-AP coordination, scheduling) to support advanced IoT applications (such as AR/VR) in manufacturing environments.

ns-3 DetNetWiFi framework

November 2022: Download at: https://lnkd.in/e-incWKw

The framework is one of the results of the effort that has been developed by members of the @fortiss IIoT team in the context of industrial and research projects over the last 2 years, and is based on the Wi-Fi 6/TSN demonstrator deployed at the @fortiss IIoT Lab.

Components:

1. Modelling of TSN endpoints and TSN enabled switches interconnected to TSN WLAN regions, including a Time-Aware Shaper

2. Target Wake Time-based time-aware scheduling

3. Per node Timing Model.

4. Fine Time Measurement protocol based synchronisation

5. Documentation, including tutorials, scientific papers, and installation videos.

6. Examples: examples for an end-to-end design (wired/wireless); and for environments with overlapping BSSs (multi-AP environments).

6G CONASENSE Symposium 2022

June 2022: Check the 6G platform CONASENSE information!

The CONASENSE 2022 international symposium, held in Munich on 27th and 28th June 2022, has been jointly organised by fortiss and CGC, Aarhus University. CONASENSE 2022 counted with 25 international speakers, presentations of papers, presentations of of next generation projects, and also with a co-located Hackathon focused on next generation mobile IoT applications across multiple domains. The event counted with an international audience of 90 participants, where 40 were in Munich. The overall event, including the peer-reviewed papers, and abstracts of talks are summarised in this report, which corresponds to the proceedings of CONASENSE 2022.


IEEE Access Internet of Space Special Section

Sep 2022: Check the IEEE Access "Internet of Space" special issue on "Internet of Space".

This Special Section focused on gathering the most recent scientific research and insights on the evolution of communication architectures and protocols able to boost the creation of a truly global internet by means of the integration of the current internet with a new Internet of Space; how to support the operation of Tier-1, Tier-2, or even Tier-3 airborne/spaceborne networks; how to address interoperability,within and across different protocol layers in the network architecture, leveraging cross-layer design; and finally how to design a more unified next-generation internet architecture10 able to transparently include spaceborne and airborne platforms in a way that allows for user-centric services, and a smooth operation of transient networks. In total, 30 articles were submitted to the Special Section,nine of which were accepted. The articles cover a wide range of topics, from scheduling aspects to multi-layer networking architectures.

Wireless TSN Survey

December 2021: the IIoT fortiss team has developed a survey together with Huawei aiming at understanding the interest in deploying deterministic wired/wireless environments in production environments. Download survey.