New Projects
- "FIT4GREEN": Federated IT for a sustainable environmental impact(EU-FP7)
- Virtualization, consolidation and data centre automation techniques provide a mean to achieve flexibility of IT solutions, but reduced energy consumption (achieved as side effect of server number reduction) is generally not considered among the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of any deployment options;
- Service Level Agreements don’t include any metrics related to environmental footprint. FIT4Green will explore both optimal deployment solutions satisfying existing SLAs with minimal energy consumption and next-generation energy-aware SLA statements - with minimal tradeoffs with respect to current metrics - providing high global improvements on environmental sustainability KPIs.
- "C2POWER": Cognitive radio and Cooperative strategies for POWER saving in multi-standard wireless devices (EU-FP7)
- Cooperative power saving strategies between neighbouring nodes using low power short range communications;
- Cognitive handover mechanisms to select the Radio Access Technology which has the lowest energy demand while providing the required QoS.
- "EUWB" (FP7 IP)
- "MOTUS" Mobility and Tourism in Urban Scenarios (Industria 2015)
- "DICONET" (FP7 STREP)
- "TASLAB" Project- Trentino as a Lab (Industry)
- Develop a citizen-centric environment where innovation is the way of being, thinking and evolving of the Trentino people;
- Develop an environment where the full innovation cycle, from basic research to market products, naturally develops;
- Develop partnerships with other territories in Europe and in the world, building on top of the existing national and international cooperation and partnerships of the Trentino actors;
- Exploit the results of the previous activities towards a sustainable, environment and people aware, development of the Trentino region.
- "OPAALS" Project- Open Philosophies of Associative Autopoietic digitaL ecosystemS (EU-FP6)
- "ONE" Project- Open Negotiation Environment (EU-FP6)
- "DBE" Project- Digital Business Ecosystems (EU-FP6)
FIT4Green aims at contributing to ICT energy reducing efforts by creating an energy-aware layer of plug-ins for data centre automation frameworks. The plug-ins enhance existing IT solutions deployment strategies by moving computation and services around a federation of IT data centres sites, with the final goal to minimize the overall power consumption figure. Without giving up on compliance to Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Quality of Service (QoS) metrics, FIT4Green optimization layer will be placed on top of the current data centres management tools to orchestrate the allocation of ICT resources and turning off unused equipments. The project will consider the deployment options of whole IT solutions, from the client devices to the data centres where the applications and services are dynamically allocated, including the impacts of the different networks providing the needed connectivity. The project rationale builds on shortcomings of current systems:
To avoid the foreseen 4G “energy trap” and to help wireless devices become more environmentally friendly, there is a clear need for disruptive strategies to address all aspects of power efficiency from the user devices through to the core infrastructure of the network, and how these devices and equipment interact with each other. As roughly 50% of the power budget of handsets is directly related to the wireless communication capabilities, any reduction in the power consumption in these functionalities will have a substantial impact on the battery life time. In this context, C2POWER project will investigate, develop and demonstrate how cognition and cooperative strategies can be extended to decrease the overall energy consumption and radiated power of mobile devices while still enabling the required performance in terms of QoS. In particular, C2POWER will investigate two complementary techniques to increase power efficiency at the wireless interface of handsets:
Ongoing Projects
The goal of EUWB—Coexisting Short Range Radio by Advanced Ultra-Wideband Radio Technology, is: i) to explore the enormous economic potential of the innovative and disruptive radio technology embodied in Ultra-Wideband (UWB), ii) to combine the innovative UWB concept with advanced methods of wireless technology such as cognitive signalling, intelligent multiple antenna and mutltiband/multimode UWB system concepts, and finally iii) to enable the introduction of advanced services and competitive applications using the radio spectrum in a highly sophisticated manner by applying devices based on next generation UWB. CREATE-NET is the main contributor and leader of WP2 Cognitive UWB Radio and Coexistence with the following topics in focus: i) spectrum sensing and monitoring, ii) identification and classification of interferers, iii) distribution of spacial interference, iv) coexistence and mitigation of interference, v) networking cooperation and negotiation, vi) concepts for cognitive signalling and vii) experimental cognitive radio test bed. Moreover, CREATE-NET is also active member of ETSI TC RRS (Reconfigurable Radio Systems), where we contribute to the standardization activities within WG3: Functional Architecture and Cognitive Pilot Channel
MOTUS is an integrated platform of services able to improve the management, sustainability and environmental compatibility of urban mobility in cities of artistic interest. MOTUS is able to collect data from heterogeneous sources (GSM, GPS, WSN, urban sensors, etc), elaborate precise models of urban mobility on which basis build services targeted to mobility and tourism managers to monitor urban mobility and redirect flows. Services for route planning will also be provided to citizens and tourists (for the latter, enriched by tourist information) to involve citizens in the process of improving urban mobility. CREATE-NET is involved with other local partners in the development of an ecomobility service. What this means in more detail is the creation of instruments for the management of citizens' and tourists' mobility and for the analysis of the current and past traffic with the intention of understanding its environmental impact. Such instruments will also have the ability to monitor the effects of the mobility strategies implemented (also considering the aims of reducing oil dependance) and give further means to foster environmental friendly behaviour of end-users and ensure at the same time a "green" labelling for local administrations in touristic areas. The subsystem developed by CREATE-NET and local Trentino partners will also be tested in Primiero Valley in collaboration with the local adnministration.
The main scope of DICONET is to examine and develop a novel approach to optical networking, providing a disruptive solution for the development of the core network of the future. The proposed solution offers ultra high speed end to end connectivity with quality of service and high reliability through the use of optimised protocols and routing algorithms that will complement a flexible control and management plane providing flexibility for the future network infrastructure. The key innovation of DICONET is the development of a dynamic network planning tool residing in the core network nodes that incorporates real-time measurements of optical layer performance into IA-RWA algorithms and is integrated into a unified control plane. This tool serves as the key enabler for providing automated rapid network reconfiguration capability as oppose with currently deployed slow planned provisioning and reconfiguration mechanisms. In addition our approach provides advance network resiliency features not currently available by any equipment vendor. CREATE-NET is leading the T2.3 investigation of techniques for disseminating physical impairments info across the network. In this task, different architectures (routing-based, signaling-based, and PCE-based) will be investigated for carrying the physical impairments in GMPLS control plane by considering both linear and nonlinear impairments, the trade-off between control overhead and efficiency of the network, etc. Create-net is also the leader of WP5 for network management and control protocols. Specially, Create-net is leading T5.2 implementation of modifications to GMPLS control plane protocols via emulated nodes, in which the modifications/extensions of GMPLS control protocols to incorporate and disseminate the impairment information will be defined and implemented in a real GMPLS stack. The extensions of the GMPLS control protocols will be validated through emulation.
The vision of the TasLab LL is to support the never ending evolutionary process which the local communities, users and enterprises (especially SMEs) are facing every day due to changing market conditions. With our eco-systemic approach and continuous investments in ICT innovation we will enhance the local specificities and vocations, while increasing the collaboration and the sharing of knowledge among the different stakeholders of local innovation. The ecosystemic approach is also empowered by a relational and conceptual model, the “Innovation Tripole”, that puts the users at the center of the innovation processes together with the enterprises and the research players that are active on the local territory. Our Vision is Innovation as the way of being thinking and Evolving. The main goal of Taslab is to create an advanced innovation infrastructure capable of responding to present and future user needs, not only from an ICT perspective but also from a cultural and social point of view. The plan is to reduce the digital divide, and at the same time to experiment new ICT solutions, with deep user involvement, all over the Trentino mountainous territory.
The main Taslab activities include:
The approach is articulated in a horizontal and in a vertical dimension. In the horizontal dimension, the approach is to take an eco-system oriented (socio/economic) perspective where different actors (citizens, public administrations, enterprises and research entities), the organisms of the ecosystem, interact with one another evolving on the base of the local/global conditions. The horizontal multidisciplinary eco-system driven approach is coupled, in the vertical dimensions, with a focus on the Trentino’s vocation areas, namely those areas which are core in the Trentino value system (e.g., eInclusion, eMobility, eBusiness and eTourism, quality of life and eEnvironment).
The two overarching aims of the OPAALS Network of Excellence are to build a sustainable interdisciplinary research community in the emerging area of Digital Ecosystems (DE) and to develop an integrated theoretical foundation for DE research, which spans three different disciplinary domains: social science, computer science, and natural science. DE are emerging as a novel approach for the catalysis of regional growth driven by SMEs.
The main claim that OPAALS makes is that in order to achieve sustainable digital business ecosystems of SMEs and software components we need to understand in depth the collaborative processes and ICTs that underpin the continuous creation, formalisation, and sharing of knowledge in the form of business models, software infrastructure for e-Business transactions and new formal and semi-formal languages.
Past Projects
The main objective of the ONE project is to enrich Digital Business Ecosystems with an open, decentralised negotiation environment and enabling tools that will allow organisations to create contract agreements for supplying complex, integrated services as a virtual organisation/coalition. The project is especially geared towards SMEs, providing them with a trusted, secure and free of charge technological environment through which they can create the tactical and strategic alliances to pursue business opportunities and growth. To be competitive in Digital Ecosystems SMEs will need to develop alliances and collaborate to provide joint service offerings and also address large tenders.
Current negotiation platforms, such as Business-to-Business electronic marketplaces and Internet trading platforms are centrally managed, not fully trusted by SMEs and/or too expensive and hence not widely used by European SMEs today. Without the support of proper tools, SMEs cannot easily find trustworthy partners to provide services or be found themselves. Access to reputation information is not readily available and negotiations are time consuming. To solve these problems, a negotiation environment must be affordable, open, not centrally controlled, support the sharing of knowledge via flexible security and trust policies and be able to learn and evolve with the changing market conditions.
ONE provides such a solution via an open-source approach ensuring transparency and sustainability. By using the ONE environment all business players (SMEs, Corporations and others) will benefit from reduction of time to market and transaction costs. The ONE environment will also provide wider ecosystem benefits in terms of an increase in the number of participants; better negotiation performance and collaboration while creating new business opportunities.
The Digital Business Ecosystem is is a 3-year (now ended), pan-European project, involving 120 researchers and specialists from 20 organisations, including some of the big names in computing and business. The project is supported by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme for research and development in Information Society Technologies. A growing number of regional economic development actors are becoming associated partners in the project as a way to introduce their software developers and end users to the technology. They are linking the project into their regional needs and have provided the project with pilot applications among businesses in their regions.
The Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) is an Internet-based software environment in which business applications can be developed and used. The unique feature of the DBE is that applications within the ecosystem are able to perform new functions that were, up to now, undreamed of by users.
The DBE is an open, free environment where even the smallest specialist software developer can participate competitively in the massive global marketplace for business applications. It will enable end users to easily access and use those applications as services, and to have the benefits of intelligence, interaction and adaptation as the software evolves in response to their own usage and that of others. The initial target of the DBE is those complex commercial transactions and processes that are not easily or economically served by current even state-of-the-art software technologies.
