Ongoing research at the Industrial IoT (IIoT) department of fortiss focuses on networking and computing architectures that enable the efficient deployment, orchestration, and operation of heterogeneous and decentralized services and resources. A central research theme is interoperability in large-scale, mission-critical environments composed of diverse and complex components, as typically found in Industrial IoT systems.
The work aims to establish foundations for adaptive, resilient, and scalable IIoT infrastructures, with particular emphasis on IoT-Edge-Cloud continuum (telco-cloud), semantic system behavior for real-time adaptation, and in-network computing architectures supporting distributed intelligence.
Current activities integrate Edge AI, deterministic networking, and decentralized orchestration to enable next-generation industrial systems across manufacturing, smart cities, energy, and smart buildings.
The latest projects are available via fortiss IIoT and ResearchGate.
Active Projects:
HE-INSTAR (01/2024-06/2026). INSTAR is a Horizon Europe project supporting Europe’s Digital Partnerships and the EU–US Trade and Technology Council through international cooperation with Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and the USA. The project contributes to global alignment on standards for AI, cybersecurity, Digital ID, quantum technologies, IoT, 5G/6G, and data technologies. At fortiss, activities focus on Industrial IoT and networking architectures supporting interoperable digital infrastructures. Role: I lead the 6G workstream in INSTAR, providing mapping of knowledge areas to standardization and global alignment with international partners. Coordination: Bluspecs.
HE CODECO (01/2023-03/2026). CODECO develops a cognitive, decentralized edge–cloud framework providing cross-layer orchestration of data, computation, and networking services. I lead the CODECO project and the IIoT team contributes to decentralized orchestration mechanisms and interoperability across the edge–cloud continuum, validated in six real-world use cases spanning smart cities, energy, manufacturing, and smart buildings. We lead the Manufacturing use-case; provided the components focusing on network observability (underlay), and the components bringing context awareness from different layers of the continuum: data, compute, network. Role: Coordinator.
Semantic Communications for IIoT (10/2023-10/2026). This mobility cooperation between fortiss and Shandong University explores semantic communications for next-generation IIoT and 6G industrial scenarios. The project investigates semantic information theory, semantic-aware transmission, and system architectures combining Edge AI with lower-layer coding mechanisms to enable meaning-oriented communication. The objective is to support large-scale industrial sensing environments requiring ultra-low latency, low jitter, high reliability, and seamless mobility across heterogeneous networks. Role: Coordinator.
Earlier Foundations | Some Projects:
C4AI Edge (2022). Joint fortiss–IBM exploratory project on context-aware orchestration of Edge–Cloud IIoT services for manufacturing. The project resulted in an open-source demonstrator (Movek8s) enabling automated, intelligent deployment of distributed IIoT applications, Movek8s (https://git.fortiss.org/iiot_external/movek8s), which was the basis to further develop CODECO. Role: Coordinator. Team: 1 Researcher, 1 M.Sc. student.
EU-IoT (H2020 CSA, 2021-2023). Coordination and Support Action building a cohesive European IoT ecosystem focused on trustworthy, secure, and sustainable IoT, contributing to the vision of a Next Generation Internet. Role: I lead the knowledge areas to standardization mapping; the IIoT team contributed to the development of the EU-IoT standards catalogue.
DetNetWiFi (Industrial project, 2022-2023). Research on deterministic wireless networking for manufacturing, addressing time-aware scheduling and service management across OSI layers 2 and 3 to support advanced applications such as AR/VR, in cooperation with Huawei Technologies. Focus on multi-AP coordination, time synchronization, and deterministic scheduling. Role: Coordinator, together with Matthias Kovatsch, Huawei. Team: 1 Researcher, 6 students.
TSNWiFi (Industrial project, 2021-2022). Research on deterministic wireless networking for manufacturing, addressing time-aware scheduling and service management across OSI layers 2 and 3 to support advanced applications such as AR/VR, Focus on time synchroniztion and scheduling for wireless. Role: Coordinator, together with Matthias Kovatsch, Huawei. Team: 1 Researcher, 6 students.
EFPF - European Factory Platform (H2020 RIA, 2019-2022). Development of an edge-based IoT service matching component enabling automated integration of IoT devices and services across federated smart factory platforms. See TSMatch. Role: Coordinator. Team: 1 Researcher, 4 students.
Human-Centric IoT, Pervasive Sensing, and Behavioral Inference
COPELABS IoT Lab (07/2018-07/2019). Performance evaluation of IoT protocols and experimental IoT infrastructures, focus on communication protocols benchmarking (e.g., MQTT, CoAP) and data-centric architectures (ICN). Role: Coordinator, ULHT/COPELABS. Team: 4 PhD students; 4 M.Sc. students.
Named-Data Networking and Unified Communications in IoT (2017–2018).Joint work with Technical University of Munich and Siemens AG on unified communication models for IoT environments, cooperation developedin the context of sabbatical leave from University Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias. Theme: unified communication models for IoT infrastructures. Role: Coordination and development.
BEING – Inference of Human Behavior via Network Mining (2017–2018). COPELABS project focused on smart (personal) IoT systems to improve quality of living. Theme: unified IoT communications and roaming habits in wireless and cellular networks. Check also NSense (M. Tavares, F. Saeik, R. C. Sofia, P. Mendes). Role: Coordinator,-Team: 4 PhD students, 2 M.Sc. students.
The Proxemics Data Lab (2016-2018). Interdisciplinary (computer science and social psychology) project and experimental lab funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), reference UID/MULTI/04111/2016. Theme: mobility estimation and roaming habits in wireless networks. Role: Coordinator; Team: 25 ULHT professors (computer science and social psychology), PhD, M.Sc., and undergrad students.
User-Centric Networking and Mobility Management
UMOBILE – Universal, Mobile-centric and Opportunistic Communication Architecture (H2020 RIA, 2015–2018). Theme: mobile-centric communication architectures supporting opportunistic networking and decentralized operation. Coordination: ATHENA.
EU IST FP7 ULOOP (2010–2013): Project funded by the European Commission (FP7), grant number 745124. Theme: user-centric networking. Coordinator: Olivier Marcé (Alcatel-Lucent). Scientific Coordination: Role: Coordinator. Team: 4 researchers, 4 M.Sc. students.
CitySense (2012–2017): COPELABS project. Theme: pervasive sensing systems for large-scale urban scenarios. See also the app DDICAS (L. Amaral, R. C. Sofia).. Team: 4 Researchers, 4 M.Sc. students.
UMM – User-centric Mobility Management (FCT, 2009–2013). Project funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, reference PTDC/EEA-TEL/105709/2008. Theme: distributed and decentralized IP mobility models. Role: Coordinator. Team: 1 M.Sc. Researcher.
UcMc: User-centric Mobile Core (Industrial project 2010-2012). Project funded by Huawei European Research Duesseldorf GmbH. Theme: distributed mobility management. Team: 4 Researchers.
ReCoop: Cooperative Wireless Networks (Industrial project 2009-2011). Project funded by the National Strategic Reference Framework, reference 3422. Theme: user-centric networking. Jointly developed with Nonius Lda. Team: 2 Researchers, 2 PhD students.
Intelligent Transportation and Future Internet Architectures
MITS: Modular Management for Intelligent Transportation Systems (Industrial Project 2012) .Project funded by EFACEC Sistemas e Engenharias S.A. Theme: network control protocols for intelligent transportation systems. Role: Coordinator. Team: 1 Researcher (M.Sc.)
FIC: Future Internet Framework. (Industrial project, 2010.2012). Funded by Cisco. Theme: Future Internet architectures and service frameworks. Coordination: Cisco. Team: 2 Senior Researchers.
Advanced Routing, Forwarding, and Network Architectures
Network coding: an Applicability Study to fixed packet-based networks (Siemens AG CT). Principal Investigator. Theme: advanced routing/forwarding concepts. Team: 1 M.Sc. working student.
E-FAME: An Enhanced Forwarding Architecture for Metro Ethernet (Siemens AG CT/Nokia Siemens GmbH). Theme: novel forwarding architectures for large scale Ethernet. Project jointly developed with Prof. Guérin, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Scientific coordination, concept development and execution. Coordination: Rute C. Sofia and Roch Guerin. Team: 1 postdoc (USA); 1 M.Sc. working student (Siemens)
Home Networking and IPv6 Metropolitan Services
HONEP, Home Networking, the Provider Perspective (Siemens AG). Concept development and specification; scientific coordination of the Siemens CT team involved. Theme: home networking. Coordination: Rute C. Sofia. Team: 1 Researcher.
HomeG6, A multifunctional IPv6 gateway for Home Networks (Siemens AG) Coordination, conception and proposal development. Theme: multifunctional and personal services gateway. Coordination and development: Rute C Sofia
Metrov6, IPv6 Metropolitan Services (Siemens AG). Coordination (international team), concept development and execution. Theme: Explore the potential of IPv6 within multi-access, multi-service Metropolitan Area Networks. Coordination: Rute C. Sofia. Team: international Researchers, China and Germany (Siemens AG).
Earlier Work
IPv6 Task Force -Mobility Working Group (2003-2004, FCCN and Bundeswehr Universität, Munich): Development of operational IPv6 mobility scenarios supporting roaming across UMTS/GPRS/WLAN, including native IPv6, transition (IPv6-over-IPv4 tunneling), and translation mechanisms, with deployment guidelines for network operators and transparent service integration (SMS, email). Role: Technical Lead. Theme: IPv6 mobility, heterogeneous roaming, transition and translation mechanisms, operator deployment guidelines.
MusicNet (Grupo Forum, Forum OnLine, 1996-1998). Online forum and database for musical hits. Role: General Coordination (Forum OnLine). Interdisciplinary team: 1 web developer, 1 designer, 1 journalist.