Project SUSTAINET inNOvAte

SUSTAINET-inNOvAte aims to research frictionless high-performant communication networks for delivering of advanced services, liberating human potential, and ensuring a digital future with reliable, secure, and sustainable paradigms. It envisions transitioning from mere connectedness to togetherness through networks enabling e.g. immersive holographic experiences, but also allowing to connect the unconnected using heterogenous technologies of fixed, wireless and satellite. It also seeks to shift from information to knowledge, leveraging cognitive and complete context awareness, and transition from efficiency to purpose by ensuring ubiquitous networks in support of mission, time and life-critical services, i.e., transition into a dynamic digital and greener world.

Europe stands at a critical juncture where the resilience, security and sovereignty of its ICT infrastructure are paramount. Challenges include security concerns, dependency on foreign technologies, management of energy resources as well as withstand cyber threats and components failures. But also impacts of physical attacks and from natural disasters must be omitted.

SUSTAINET-inNOvAte intertwines solutions to address these challenges by investigating and demonstrating the enhancement of reliability with robust system-technologies and network sensing to diagnose anomalies for providing highest network resilience. Our “Network-as-a-Sensor” targets observation of challenges in network equipment of power grids and allows to securely, autonomously and ubiquitously tune the network accordingly to enhance its survivability. Such an “agile network survivability” allows adapting redundancy to threats and failures as well as availability of renewable energy.

The implementation of security measures like ‘security by design’, secure and autonomous network management with Intent-Based concepts, as well as the applicability of advanced technologies like neuromorphic and generative AI will support the network paradigms. All these items will respect energy-efficient technologies and systems to enable a sustainable future. The successful implementation holds profound implications for Europe’s digital future and technological sovereignty, fortifying green ICT networks, reducing dependency on foreign technologies, and regaining a global leadership position for Europe in ICT networking.