The activities and achievements performed per WP are the following:
WP2
T2.1: The 3 ETHER use cases, their functional/non-functional requirements, KPIs, and KVIs have been defined. In addition, D2.2 was submitted.
T2.2: ETHER architecture has almost been concluded and D2.1 was submitted.
T2.3: A techno-economic analysis of the ETHER architecture has been defined together with a market exploitation for the 3 use cases. Furthermore, D2.3 was submitted.
WP3
T3.1: Initial work on: i) path-loss modelling for 28GHz and direct access between LEO and user device; ii) distributed beamforming from LEO satellite swarms. In particular, for a uniform distribution of phase error synchronization for each of the satellites in the swarm, the CDF of the normalized main lobe gain has been derived; iii) The orthogonal time-frequency space (OTFS) modulation in a LEO-satellite based communication scenario as an alternative of OFDM.
T3.2: Initial development of the flexible payload framework and its different flexibility levels:
T3.3:
-Metrics deployment to quantify and capture the semantics of information
-Holistic consideration of information handling to achieve a goal
-Proactively caching a data subset, leveraging predictive analytics techniques reducing the data that is generated, stored, and transmitted without affecting the conveyed information amount.
-Reduction of processed data leading to higher EE
T3.4: -Exploration of handover mechanisms between LEO to LEO in the context of Store and Forward (S&F) NB-IoT to offer continuous service to UEs from within NTN.
- The first version of the Satellite-enabled Omnet++ system-level simulation platform has been produced that will be used to test which vertical handover algorithms
WP4
T4.1:
For the NBC orchestrator development of:
-The observability stack/data lake to support aggregation, storage and retrieval of Infrastructure and service metrics
-An ML flow framework to facilitate storage, training, inference and lifecycle management of AI models of ETHER
-A North Bound Interface to facilitate communication between the Orchestration logic of zero-touch closed loop and NBC orchestrator.
In addition:
Successful extension of the ETSI OSM architecture to allow its use with satellites. Furthermore, integration of a geographical network information management tool into OSM.
T4.2: -Start of SDN-based solution to dynamically coordinate communication between ground and satellite layers.
-System simulation model developed for connectivity performance analysis between aircraft and gNB in ETHER 3D network.
T4.3:
-Data analysis and visualisation on AVA dataset
-Developed, trained and evaluated several AI models for KPI forecasting leveraging AVA dataset
-Began the development of alternative AI model for KPI forecasting using frequential analysis
-Began the development of an AI model for Anomalies prediction that leverage as input the forecasting AI models developed previously
-Design and evaluation of aircraft traffic routing and handover methods and network performance optimization algorithms for the KPI using the developed simulation model.
WP5
T5.1: Several ongoing meetings for the testbed and configuration setup of each of the demonstration activities concerning each of the 3 ETHER use cases.
