Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SPRINTER (Low-coSt and energy-efficient hybrid Photonic integrated circuits for fibeR-optic, free-space optIcal and mmWave commuNication systems supporting Time critical networking in industrial EnviRonments)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-02-29
Industries of the future foresee a holistic integration of computation, communication, and physical processes, including human-to-machine and machine-to-machine communication and interaction in working routines. Several application areas can be distinguished including factory automation, process automation, logistics, warehousing, monitoring, and maintenance. A major enabler of these advancements is the physical infrastructure that should provide a ubiquitous and powerful connection between all interworking nodes. Although each industrial application poses a different set of requirements on the physical infrastructure, there are some main requirements that should be fulfilled to enable the truly digital transformation of the industries.
Industrial networks of the future will have to inherently scale-up and support massive data transfer with Gbit/s throughput, due to the emergence of a myriad of new types of sensors being deployed concurrently in factory floors. Additionally, for time-critical applications that include closed-loop control systems, it is of utmost importance that the communication between the controllers and their associated field devices is reliable and time-bounded. Moreover, regardless of the size and type (indoor or outdoor) of the industrial premises, field devices should be able to freely placed around the factory floor, overcoming the physical barriers imposed by wired connectivity towards the controller. The wireless networks should also be harmonized with the underlying wired networks, supporting deterministic latency and high throughput connectivity. Finally, a key parameter that will expedite the industries’ digitalization is the cost, that should be kept low by ensuring the deployment of low-cost and energy-efficient components.
SPRINTER is an Innovation Action (IA) project funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe program, launched on September 1st, 2022 [M01]. SPRINTER comes as a pragmatic innovation action aiming to combine novel optical components and methods from various powerful but complementary photonic integration platforms to develop a set of low-cost, energy-efficient, and ultra-dynamic optical transceivers and optical switching solutions to cope with the diverse needs of the industrial networks and expedite their truly digital transformation, underpinning the way towards the 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0).
Within SPRINTER low-cost and energy-efficient 200 Gb/s optical transceivers, supporting high-capacity connectivity, will be developed. Additionally, SPRINTER will provide ultra-fast wavelength-tunable 10 Gb/s optical transceivers, enabling the development of an all-optical switching system, guaranteeing the reliability and time determinism required for time critical communication. In addition, leveraging well-proven integration techniques the project will develop a reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer, optimized for operation within space-division multiplexing networks, assisting on the reduction of data congestion in communication systems and preventing the data loss and delay in data delivery.
Considering the ultra-dynamic nature of the industrial networks due to the deployment of remote nodes, SPRINTER will provide a set of groundbreaking photonics-enabled transceivers supporting wireless connectivity by means of a free-space optical or a mmWave channel. The transceivers will be able to operate reliably in both indoor and outdoor environments thanks to the complementary characteristics of the two channels. Moreover, the project will develop a unified network platform, providing the required methods and tools to support time-deterministic operation, and enable real-time communication with guaranteed service quality.
SPRINTER's developed technology will be evaluated within application scenarios that will be deployed in a relevant industrial environment incorporating a fully operational closed-loop control system.
Industrial networks of the future will have to inherently scale-up and support massive data transfer with Gbit/s throughput, due to the emergence of a myriad of new types of sensors being deployed concurrently in factory floors. Additionally, for time-critical applications that include closed-loop control systems, it is of utmost importance that the communication between the controllers and their associated field devices is reliable and time-bounded. Moreover, regardless of the size and type (indoor or outdoor) of the industrial premises, field devices should be able to freely placed around the factory floor, overcoming the physical barriers imposed by wired connectivity towards the controller. The wireless networks should also be harmonized with the underlying wired networks, supporting deterministic latency and high throughput connectivity. Finally, a key parameter that will expedite the industries’ digitalization is the cost, that should be kept low by ensuring the deployment of low-cost and energy-efficient components.
SPRINTER is an Innovation Action (IA) project funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe program, launched on September 1st, 2022 [M01]. SPRINTER comes as a pragmatic innovation action aiming to combine novel optical components and methods from various powerful but complementary photonic integration platforms to develop a set of low-cost, energy-efficient, and ultra-dynamic optical transceivers and optical switching solutions to cope with the diverse needs of the industrial networks and expedite their truly digital transformation, underpinning the way towards the 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0).
Within SPRINTER low-cost and energy-efficient 200 Gb/s optical transceivers, supporting high-capacity connectivity, will be developed. Additionally, SPRINTER will provide ultra-fast wavelength-tunable 10 Gb/s optical transceivers, enabling the development of an all-optical switching system, guaranteeing the reliability and time determinism required for time critical communication. In addition, leveraging well-proven integration techniques the project will develop a reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer, optimized for operation within space-division multiplexing networks, assisting on the reduction of data congestion in communication systems and preventing the data loss and delay in data delivery.
Considering the ultra-dynamic nature of the industrial networks due to the deployment of remote nodes, SPRINTER will provide a set of groundbreaking photonics-enabled transceivers supporting wireless connectivity by means of a free-space optical or a mmWave channel. The transceivers will be able to operate reliably in both indoor and outdoor environments thanks to the complementary characteristics of the two channels. Moreover, the project will develop a unified network platform, providing the required methods and tools to support time-deterministic operation, and enable real-time communication with guaranteed service quality.
SPRINTER's developed technology will be evaluated within application scenarios that will be deployed in a relevant industrial environment incorporating a fully operational closed-loop control system.
Within Period 1, the use cases and application scenarios have been outlined and guide the design and the development of SPRINTER technology demonstrators and the high-level system requirements derived. Out of these 6 use-cases, two application scenarios stood out as the ones with commercial interest from the end-user within the SPRINTER consortium, leveraging the key technology advancements targeted within the project. The two application scenarios, focusing on i) robotics motions accuracy and ii) visual inspection for quality assurance, were analyzed in detail with respect to their high-level requirements, determining the setups for their demonstration using SPRINTER prototypes. The network architecture of SPRINTER defined. More specifically, a centralized network configuration has been developed to manage the resources and set the policies and the priorities to the flows via the TSN software, which has also been developed and integrated into the TSN enabled devices. In parallel the component specifications and the design of SPRINTER prototypes have been defined and Modules-1, -2 and -3 are under development/fabrication phase. The layouts for Module-4 are close to be finalized. In parallel, early testing activities have been initiated. Additionally, during this first period of the project, all SPRINTER partners carried out exploitation planning activities based on the initial market analysis outcomes. Finally, the SPRINTER’s communication’s kit is ready, including the promotional video while the consortium was actively participating in international events in the form of workshops and conferences and has also achieved its first scientific publications.