TERAWAY will develop a disruptive generation of THz transceivers that can overcome the current limitations of THz technology and enable its commercial uptake. Leveraging optical concepts and photonic integration techniques, TERAWAY will develop a common technology base for the generation, emission and detection of wireless signals within an ultra-wide range of carrier frequencies that will cover the W (92-114.5 GHz), D (130-174.8 GHz) and THz band (252-322 GHz). In this way, the project will provide for the first time the possibility to organize the spectral resources of a network within these bands into a common pool of radio resources that can be flexibly coordinated and used. In parallel, the use of photonics will enable the development of multi-channel transceivers with amplification of the wireless signals in the optical domain and with multi-beam optical beamforming in order to have a radical increase in the directivity of each wireless beam. At the end of this development, TERAWAY will make available a set of truly disruptive transceivers including a 2- and a 4-channel module with operation from 92 up to 322 GHz, data rate per channel up to 108 Gb/s, transmission reach in the THz band of more than 400 m, and possibility for the formation of wireless beams that can be independently steered in order to establish backhaul and fronthaul connections between a set of fixed and moving nodes. TERAWAY will evaluate these transceivers under an application scenario of communication and surveillance coverage of outdoor mega-events using moving nodes in the form of drones that will carry a gNB or the radio part of it. The network during the implementation of this scenario in the 5G testbed of AALTO will be controlled by an innovative SDN controller that will perform the management of the network and radio resources in a homogeneous way with large benefits for the network performance, energy efficiency, slicing efficiency and possibility to support heterogeneous services.

The UN's 2030 Agenda, adopted by world leaders in 2015, represents the new global sustainable development framework and sets 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Foremost is the Zero Hunger SDG, which seeks to end hunger and malnutrition, and ensure access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food. One of the most productive and efficient sources remains aquaculture, which is the process of rearing, breeding, and harvesting of aquatic species, in controlled aquatic environments, like the oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, streams and purpose built Recirculating Aquaculture systems (RAS). According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), aquaculture is growing faster than any other major food production sector, with 50% of all sea food consumed is obtained by aquaculture. We are currently standing at a critical juncture to maintain healthy aquaculture conditions. To do so we need to continuously monitor the living environments of the fish and apply cutting edge bio-sensing to safeguard these fish farms and therefore our food security. The current consortium brings together the latest in biosensor technology, scaling up procedures, and aquaculture expertise, to safeguard our food security in the present and future years. By becoming an aquaculture pathogen testing hub and bringing to market a working diagnostic platform monitoring salmon pathogens, the consortium [Surfix (NL), Phix (NL), TunaTech (DE), CSEM (CH), and LRE Medical (DE)] aims to provide a long-term solution to ensure our collective food security. This project will build upon the BIOCDx project (ID: 732309) which successfully delivered a working prototype, however, due to lack of scalability, the overall costs of the biosensor remained very high (~€500/chip). Thus, the principal aim of PHOTO–SENS is to investigate scalable production of this technology (to reduce the costs 10 fold; €50/chip), and validation with an end–user in the aquaculture market.

Despite the significant advances that photonic integrated circuits (PICs) offer in terms of miniaturization, power consumption and functionalities, they run into scalability and cost issues, related to the fabrication yield, the increased integration and packaging complexity, the lack of wafer scale compatible processes and the lack of integration and packaging standards. Furthermore, so far photonic packaging considered the sub-GHz electrical connections to the PICs as a separate and second priority issue, until the number of electrical IOs of the PICs was too large to ignore. POLYNICES aims to address these challenges with the development of a novel general purpose photonic integration technology, compatible with wafer scale processes that will reduce the production costs of photonic modules by at least 10x. POLYNICES will develop for the first time a polymer based Electro-Optic PCB (EOPCB) motherboard that will host Si3N4 chiplets, InP components and micro-optical elements. POLYNICES invests in Si3N4 platform with PZT actuators to realize complex structures in only 1x1 cm2 chiplets with ultra-low power consumption. The chiplets’ grid array electrical pads and the use of flip-chip integration on vertical alignment stops will allow optical alignment and electrical connection in one step. The standard size and interfaces of the chiplets as well as the electronic IC co-packaging on the same EOPCB, provides excellent scalability and customization, and significantly simplifies packaging. Dielectric rod THz antennas will be integrated on the EOPCB taking advantage of its good HF properties. Using the above novel concepts and building blocks, POLYNICES will develop a fully integrated optoelectronic FMCW THz spectrometer with THz antenna array and beam steering abilities for quality control in plastics, a 16x16 quantum processor with integrated 780 nm light source and non-linear crystals and a 24x24 quantum processor with integrated squeezed light state source.

photonixFAB brings together key European photonics and semiconductor players, to establish a strong and sovereign European supply chain for silicon photonics. The consortium leverages the volume capacity of X-FAB, the European More-than-Moore foundry, and addresses the work program with six key objectives: (1) Transferring IMEC's world-renowned silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform to X-FAB, to achieve industrial manufacturing capacity. The SOI platform addresses a variety of high-speed and sensing applications. (2) Extending the industrial manufacturing capability of LIGENTEC's silicon nitride (SiN) technology at X-FAB, to become the industry standard for SiN photonics. The low-loss, and broad transparency of SiN are perfect for sensing, quantum computing, amongst others. (3) Increasing maturity of heterogeneous integration with SMART Photonics' Indium Phosphide (InP) active components such as lasers, modulators and detectors. These components are integrated on top of the SOI and SiN platforms by transfer-printing. This is an X-FAB associated technology, forming a key innovation differentiator for photonixFAB. The leading European RTOs, IMEC and CEA, are supporting photonixFAB with various technologies, developed in Horizon Europe activities, such as prototype transfer-printing, LiNbO3 modulators and Ge detectors on SiN. (4) Strengthening the European ecosystem with design automation (Luceda), innovative packaging solutions (PHIX), and increased testing capabilities. (5) Demonstrating the viability of the new supply chain and technologies through six application-oriented demonstrators in a wide array of markets. (6) Setting up pilot line and multi-project wafer access to serve innovation by start-ups, SMEs and large entities, and opening photonixFAB for direct feedback on competitiveness and capabilities. Thereby the relationships between the supply chain partners and prospective end-users, as well as between the photonics and the ECS worlds will be strengthened.

Imaging tools such as the Computed Tomography (CT) and the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can offer diagnosis of the cancer and the cardiovascular disease (CVD), but not insight into the molecular mechanisms that promote their occurrence, progression and possible resistance to treatment. Information about these mechanisms is present however in the blood. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are secreted into the blood, and can inform us about the state of their cells of origin, and by extension, about the presence and progression of diseases. Unfortunately, their detection is still imperfect due to the ultra-small size (50-200 nm) of most of them. PHOREVER will develop a disruptive multi-sensing platform that will enable for the first time the reliable detection of EVs with size down to 80 nm, the detection of EVs with specific biomarkers (proteins) on their surface, and the calculation of the corresponding EV concentrations in the blood. Its operation will be based on 3 sensing modalities: Flow-cytometry (FCM) with 4 wavelengths (405, 488, 633 and 785 nm) as the main modality for EV detection and size classification, dual-channel swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) with 2.5 µm resolution for imaging of the sensing area and noise reduction of the FCM measurements, and fluorescence sensing at 488 nm for biomarker detection after staining. The key components will be the 2 photonic integrated circuits in TriPleX and the 3 microfluidic chips, which will be integrated as a compact point-of-care device. The medical impact can be ground-breaking. The first use case will be related to pancreatic cancer with focus on progression monitoring, metastasis risk assessment, and treatment efficacy evaluation. The second use case will be related to stroke with focus on its fast and precise diagnosis for time-to-treatment reduction. In either case, data analysis empowered by artificial intelligence will correlate the measurement data to disease specific medical information.