With the fast development of electronic devices and computing technologies, various emerging applications (e.g., big data analysis, artificial intelligence and 3-dimensional (3D) media, Internet of things, etc.) have been entering our society with significant amounts of data traffic. While mobile networks are already indispensable to our society for “anywhere anytime connection,” one main characteristic of future mobile networks (i.e., B5G: Beyond 5G) is the very huge amount of data, which requires very high throughput per devices (multiple Gbps, up to Tera bps: Tbps) and multiple Tbps per area efficiency (Tbps/km2). Though some disrupting 5G technologies may provide a few Gbps service, it is still not able to achieve hundreds of Gbps or Tbps rates. In the near future, the peak rate of mobile communication networks is expected to reach hundreds of Gbps or even Tbps rates, which requires either very high spectrum efficiency (e.g., much higher than 10 bits/s/Hz) in millimetre wave bands or very large bandwidth (e.g., more than 20GHz) . While the former is very challenging, the latter can be achieved in THz bands (roughly, 100GHz to 10THz). The design of ubiquitous access with very high rates in mobile and heterogeneous network (HetNet) environments is the key to the development of future mobile networks, and so the objective of this collaborative 6G-TERAFIT is to create a knowledge transfer between the researchers and the engineers who will contribute to the design and implementation of future B5G ultra-fast networks and create the pedestal for them to become potential leaders in the resulting scientific, technological, and industrial fields. This project is committed to creating an “excellent” educational training platform that is multi-disciplinary and inter-sectoral in nature.

The Social and hUman ceNtered XR (SUN) project aims at investigating and developing extended reality (XR) solutions that integrate the physical and the virtual world in a convincing way, from a human and social perspective. The virtual world will be a means to augment the physical world with new opportunities for social and human interaction. We will address the following limitations: ● Lack of solutions to develop scalable and cost-effective new XR applications; ● Lack of convincing solutions for mixing of the virtual and physical environment; ● Lack of plausible and convincing human interaction interfaces in XR; ● Barriers due to resource limitations of end-user devices; We will develop solutions to surpass current limitations, including: ● Development of scalable solutions to obtain plausible and convincing virtual copies of physical objects and environments; ● Development of solutions for a seamless and convincing interaction between the physical and the virtual world; ● Development of wearable sensors and haptic interfaces for convincing and natural interaction with the virtual environment; ● Development of artificial intelligence-based solutions to address current computing, memory, and network limitations of wearable devices; The developed solution will be demonstrated in three real-life scenarios: 1 XR for rehabilitation after accidents or diseases. 2 XR in the industry to increase safety and improve social interaction among workers. 3 XR to remove interaction barriers for persons with disabilities.