International Cooperation Projects
UP-SCALE
Urban Pioneers – Systemic Change Amid Liveable Environments
(H2020, 2023-2025)
The Slovenian cities of Kranj, Ljubljana, and Velenje are working on new ways of governing their climate transition – finding common ground for making Pilot City activities in different sectors work more effectively. While Kranj focuses on reducing mobility-related emissions, Ljubljana will center its work on finding uses for industrial and non-industrial (excess) waste heat and Velenje on the consumption of thermal energy in buildings. But as they embark on these different priorities, their collective sights are set on making their responses “more effective, transparent, and responsive.”
As part of “UP-SCALE Urban Pioneers – Systemic Change Amid Livable Environments,” the goal is to find new approaches that can be shared in other communities facing similar challenges. The three cities will each create innovation hubs called one-stop shops to act as repositories for their findings, with Pilot City partners in Ljubljana emphasising the centrality of knowledge sharing to the cities’ plans: “We see the project UP-SCALE as an opportunity not only to start developing our own pathways towards climate neutrality, but also to gain new knowledge and become an inspiration to other Slovenian cities and beyond.”
NANCY
An Artificial Intelligent Aided Unified Network for Secure Beyond 5G Long-Term Evolution
(HE, 2023-2025)
The overall aim of NANCY is to introduce a secure and intelligent architecture for the beyond the fifth generation (B5G) wireless network. Leveraging AI and blockchain, NANCY enables secure and intelligent resource management, flexible networking, and orchestration. In this direction, novel architectures, namely point-to-point (P2P) connectivity for device-to-device connectivity, mesh networking, and relay-based communications, as well as protocols for medium access, mobility management, and resource allocation will be designed. These architectures and protocols will make the most by jointly optimizing the midhaul, and fronthaul. This is expected to enable truly distributed intelligence and transform the network to a low-power computer. Likewise, by following a holistic optimization approach and leveraging the developments in blockchain, NANCY aims at supporting E2E personalized, multi-tenant and perpetual protection.
SiQUID
Slovenian Quantum Communication Infrastructure Demonstration
(DIGITAL, 2023-2025)
SiQUID will implement quantum key distribution (QKD) lSiQUID will implement quantum key distribution (QKD) links between multiple government nodes in Slovenia and a test-bed quantum network between research institutions in Ljubljana for advanced quantum communications protocols. We will coordinate our efforts with public and industrial stakeholders, and we will train key personnel, young researchers and engineers in quantum technology. The first test nodes implemented will be based on our recent first demonstration of QKD links between three European countries (arXiv:2203.11359-paper attached). We will harness directly modulated laser diodes to ensure the phase randomization between adjacent pulse sequences, and we will use a high-assurance random number generator to randomize the choice of the state preparation basis. These improvements promise a higher level of security, a larger range, and a higher key rate. This will form the basis for the implementation of the QKD links between government nodes. To reduce the cost of future QKD networks, SiQUID will investigate the feasibility of cheaper alternatives for the detection nodes by balancing cost against the key rates achievable in metropolitan links. At the same time, we will use superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) to implement high-efficiency links. We will use these to test long-distance links between distant cities in Slovenia, and to nodes close to neighboring countries. Moreover, we will test advanced quantum communication protocols like measurement-device-independent (MDI) QKD and the long-distance distribution of entanglement to further increase the security of QKD implementations, and to prepare the ground for a future full-fledged quantum communication network. We are in close contact with QCI initiatives in neighbouring countries to facilitate the harmonisation of the national efforts, and to facilitate future cross-border links and the implementation of the space segment of EuroQCI.
BD4OPEM
(H2020, 2020-2023)
Big Data for OPen innovation Energy Marketplace
Energy power systems face big challenges to cope with grid integration demands of an ever-increasing number of distributed generation and consumption devices in an interconnected world. Technology offers a huge range of opportunities to develop solutions in the uncertain current and upcoming Energy market situation. This proposal considers Open Innovation as a natural solution to create a seamless link and balance between energy stakeholders needs and the solutions to be developed. Nowadays, old metering, operation and control devices are combined with smart systems with a huge amount of data being available yet unused or underused. This data offers a wide range of possibilities to improve existing energy services and creating new ones, all available in an Open Innovation Marketplace, and processed through an Analytic Toolbox. BD4OPEM will develop this Analytic Toolbox, based on Big data techniques, providing tools for enabling efficient business processes in the energy sector. By extracting more value from available data, a range of innovative services will be created in the fields of grid monitoring, operation and maintenance, network planning, fraud detection, smart houses/buildings/industries energy management, blockchain transactions and flexibility aggregation for demand-response. The Open Innovation Marketplace will ensure secure data flows from data providers to solution providers, always compliant with GDPR requirements, so that asset management is enhanced, consumer participation in energy balancing is promoted and new data-driven business models are created through innovative energy services. The project will demonstrate the above features in four large scale pilots with diverse distributed energy sources (e.g. PV, wind, hydro, EV, storage…), while promoting the competitiveness and synergies of Sustainable innovations and IT Ecosystems in Europe.
TimeSmart
Timeliness of Information in Smart Grids Networks
( HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF, 2022 – 2025)
TimeSmart project will investigate the applicability of the novel Age of Information metric in smart grid networks. While the metric has become a valuable tool for measuring the system’s performance, its practical value and impact in the real-time system are left unanswered. This project seeks to remedy that by applying the metric to a system in which the timing of collected data, currently measured through jitter or latency, profoundly impacts management and control. The AoI offers a new perspective on how the system should collect and process information, as such decisions are also based on the context of processed information (their semantic nature). In turn, the new approach can offer an innovative way of improving the efficiency of renewable electrical energy supply and electrical loads by taking advantage of the available edge infrastructure. This project aims to adopt the AoI metric in smart grid networks to improve the energy transmission efficiency, achievable through more timely collected information, to save energy.
COST ACTION
(2021 – 2025)
Omogočanje inteligentnih radijskih komunikacij za vseobsežne interakcije brez zaznavanja prekinitev/ Intelligence-Enabling Radio Communication for Seamless Inclusive Interactions
Bilateral cooperation
SLO-ME
(2021 – 2023)
IJS – Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Montenegro
Lokalizacija v zaprtih prostorih podprta s strojnim učenjem/ Machine learning supported indoor localization