5G-PINE

All authors, who wish to present their innovative and high quality research work to the B5G-PINE Workshop / AIAI-2025 Conference, should submit their original paper through the AIAI Conference Submission System “Microsoft CMT”.

The length of the standard paper submission has been now set to 14 PAGES (with references included).
Authors, who will exceed the 14 pages limit, will still be able to publish their manuscript, with an additional charge of 100 euros for each extra page.

The minimum length of submitted papers must be no less than 8 pages. Manuscripts with less than 8 pages long will not be taken into consideration for the Conference and they will immediately be rejected.

All papers submitted at B5G-PINE 2025/AIAI 2025 will be scientifically evaluated by a panel of experts. Manuscripts will be reviewed to the international standards by at least three (-3-) academic/business referees.

Information about “How to submit a contribution” can be found at:
https://ifipaiai.org/2025/paper-submission/

The accepted papers are divided into 2 different categories:
Full Papers: Full paper will be considered every manuscript that extends from 12 pages and on, with references included (pages ≥ 12).
Short Papers: As short papers will be published all manuscripts that have length less than 12 pages, with references included (8 ≤ pages < 12).

All authors’ manuscripts must be consistent with the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series format, in order for the papers to be considered for publication.
Authors must ensure that their papers adhere to the Springer Proceedings guidelines.
The guidelines (and LaTeX / Word templates) can be found at:
http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
The program committee reserves the right to change the format of a contribution if necessary.

Accepted papers will published in the SPRINGER IFIP AICT Lecture Notes in Computer Science proceedings, and they will be available on site.

It is expected that there should be at least 35-40 papers to be submitted and the “half” (i.e.: 15-20 papers) are expected to be accepted, according to the “50% acceptance” criterion.

6G-PATH includes 26 partners aiming to validate 10 specific use cases from 4 verticals of strong market interest (i.e.: farming, education, health and smart cities), via the inclusion of 7 well established test beds all around Europe.

SUNRISE-6G includes 28 partners from 12 European member states aiming to create a federation of 6G test infrastructures in a pan-European facility; in particular, it deploys 4 testbeds in 8 EU member states and focuses on the 2 use cases.

AMBITIOUS includes 18 market actors from 5 European member states that aim to be involved in joint publications. The project promotes the development of several use cases with strong market impact, aiming to promote corresponding innovations and synergetic activities.

6G-INTENSE includes 11 partners from 8 European member states aiming to develop next-generation AI-native management and orchestration system featuring intent translation and propagation, separating service from resource management while operating in a multi-stakeholder, multi-technological, and multi-tenant environment on top of a Cloud-Edge Continuum infrastructure.

6G-DALI includes 13 partners from 8 European member states that will act around two essential pillars.

OASEES includes 23 partners from 9 European member states that will work in six different use cases.

6G-BRICKS includes 17 partners from 8 European member states that will act around two fundamental use cases covering, each one, 2 separate proof of concepts.

CyberNEMO comprises 23 partners from 11 European countries targeting on 6 pilots including various Critical Infrastructures (Energy, Water, Healthcare), media distribution, agrifood and fintech supply chain.

DATAMITE includes 24 partners aiming to test and validate 3 use cases in 6 dedicated pilots, promoting strong interoperability aspects within a variety of domains and related user needs.

The fact that the AIAI 2025 Conference is organized in Limassol, Cyprus at a convenient time-instance (June 26-29, 2025) provides suitable conditions for several partners to “join” the Workshop. (Several among the members of the Workshop Program Committee can also join the Workshop either as Conference participants and/or as authors/co-authors of approved papers).
Based upon Workshop acceptance condition, the main organiser (OTE) could also check the possibility for inviting a key-note speaker, potentially a high-level expert from the European Commission in order to “attract” more participants. An equal option of inviting a representative of the Greek Government will also be investigated.
Other options (such as some parallel demos coming directly from the participating projects) could also be investigated and/or assessed at a later stage, together with the Conference organisers.

The 10^th B5G-PINE Workshop has been established to disseminate knowledge obtained from ongoing EU projects as well as from any other action of EU-funded research, in the wider thematic area of “B5G/6G Innovative Activities – Putting Intelligence to the Network Edge” and with the aim of focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in modern 5G/B5G telecommunications infrastructures.

This should take place by emphasizing upon associated results, methodologies, trials, concepts and/or findings originating from technical reports/deliverables, from related pilot actions and/or any other relevant 5G-/B6G-/6G-based applications, intending to enhance intelligence to the network edges.

Internet grows into a more “complex” and “sophisticated” entity than it was originally intended to be some years ago. Actually, it is much more than “simply a modern communication system” as it comprises of numerous essential parts and/or “components” of modern networks, platforms, infrastructures and of related (usually innovative) facilities together with multi-generated “content” and a variety of connected equipment and devices. Internet is the essential “core” of our modern world towards creating a real knowledge-based society and a variety of businesses providing numerous challenges for development and growth. New and unexpected applications and services are nowadays emerging from cutting-edge technological developments that “shape” the requirements for future progress and this dynamic evolution makes the entire context of reference “more fascinating”. Internet’s rapid evolution also influences socio-economic, environmental and cultural aspects of modern society. The Future (Internet-based) Networks aim to enable smart connectivity for all, anywhere, at any time at the highest speed and efficiency fulfilling the overwhelming demands of today’s modern societies, but also overcoming challenges about security, privacy, etc.

The convergence of telecommunications and IT systems in future networks will result in open platforms which will enable new opportunities for innovation and new business models for all involved market players (especially for the SMEs). This will, in turn, require more systematic adoption of software defined networking (SDN) concepts to adapt future networks to new requirements allowing continuous and fast innovation cycles in the communication infrastructures and in the Internet, as well as for the promotion of modern network and service management features.

In any case, the communication network and service environment of the future will be enormously enhanced and much more complex than the one of today.  The corresponding network infrastructures will be capable of “connecting everything” according to a diversity of application-specific requirements, that is: People, things, processes, computing centres, content, knowledge, information, goods; and all these in a quite flexible, really mobile, and powerful way. Thus, it is expected that the Future Internet (FI) – based context will encompass an intense variety of connected sensors, connected (smart) vehicles, smart meters and smart home gadgets way beyond our current experience of tablet and smartphone connectivity. As a consequence, the purely innovative 5G/6G technological framework promotes the design/establishment and operation of a next generation network that will provide reliable, omnipresent, ultra-low latency, broadband connectivity, and will be able of managing critical and demanding applications/services, which are further modified by new challenging personalized applications, proliferate at an immense rate.

The broad establishment of the 5G mobile communications technology is already showing signs of becoming a major factor in “driving productivity” and is expected to be the “key enabler” for long-envisaged, highly integrated and autonomous applications in many sectors. Actually, it becomes evident that this new wave of technology will further accelerate digitalization of economy and society, as a whole.

Previous generations of mobile technologies mostly satisfied human communications in the form of voice, data and Internet. On the contrary, 5G and its advancements towards B5G (Beyond 5G) – and/or 6G –practically aim for industrial communications to help digitize the economy in a broader scope and also contribute towards a form of beneficial worldwide digital transformation.

In this framework, various vertical sectors such as, for example, eHealth and wellness, education, media and entertainment, public safety, smart cities, transport and logistics, manufacturing, agriculture/farming, industrial IoT, automotive and transportation will likely be the “leading adopters”. In particular, wireless and mobile communication technologies are expected to progress far beyond anything seen so far in wireless-enabled applications, making everyday lives smoother and safer and dramatically improving the efficiency of corresponding businesses.

Thus, all potential technology and business challenges are becoming much greater and cover a broader scope of activities if progress beyond 5G (B5G) is taken into account and/or even with “flavors” of “what is to be later called as the 6G”. 

Due to the multiplicity of the sectors covered and the great variety of technologies to be implemented, it is expected that 6G will create a new era where billions of connected “things”, humans and other equipment (such as robots, drones and vehicles) will generate Zettabytes of digital information. In this scope, 6G will be dealing with more challenging applications (e.g., holographic telepresence and immersive communication) and shall “meet” far more stringent requirements, if compared to previous generations. In practice, 6G shall be set to support various novel and evolved use cases (UCs) – as well as related application domains – that shall fulfill important societal needs and create value in multiple ways. New interactions will be made possible, between humans and machines, which are expected to benefit citizens, societies and involved industries.

Thus, 6G will be the next network generation that will help us tackle such sort of critical and high-demanding challenges, as it will probably be a self-contained ecosystem of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It will progressively evolve from being human-centric to being both human- and machine-centric and will bring a near-instant and unrestricted complete wireless connectivity. A new landscape will also appear for the enterprises and the market players, due to the convergence that 6G will allow in the fields of connectivity, robotics, cloud and secure and trustworthy commerce. This will drastically “reform” the way enterprises – and market actors in general – operate. The novel 6G architecture is expected to be sufficiently flexible and efficient, to enable easy integration of “everything” (e.g., a network of networks, joint communication and sensing, non-terrestrial networks and terrestrial communication) encompassing AI-powered enablers along with local and distributed compute capabilities. The use of AI everywhere in the network, where it can be lead to beneficial flavours, shall also enhance network performance. AI and Machine Learning (ML) will help to maintain operation cost-effectiveness of envisioned complex 6G services, such as the interaction on human-digital-physical worlds and Internet of Senses, to automate some level of decision-making processes and to achieve a zero-touch approach.

In the same context, the vision of the future 5G/6G Radio Access Network (RAN) corresponds to a highly heterogeneous network with unprecedented requirements in terms of capacity, efficiency, reliability, and latency or data rates. To efficiently cope with this enormous heterogeneity and complexity, the RAN planning and optimization processes can benefit – at a large extent – from exploiting cognitive-like capabilities that embrace knowledge and intelligence.

In this direction, legacy systems already started the automation in the planning and optimization processes through Self-Organizing Network (SON) functionalities. In current 5G, also by assessing the dawn of big data technologies, it is now seen that SON features are being evolved towards a more proactive approach able to exploit the huge amount of data available by an involved (Mobile) Network Operator and to incorporate additional dimensions coming from the assessment of end-users’ experiences and end-user’s behavior. Then, SON can be strongly enhanced through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and/or Machine Learning (ML) based tools, able to smartly process input data from the environment and come up with knowledge that can be formalized in terms of models and/or structured metrics that represent the network behavior.

This will allow gaining in-depth and detailed knowledge about the whole 5G/5BG/6G ecosystem, understanding hidden patterns, data structures and relationships, and using them for a more efficient network management.

Moreover, B5G/6G aims to deliver intelligence directly to the network edge by exploiting the emerging paradigms of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Edge Cloud Computing (ECC). In particular, 5G/6G targets at offering rich virtualization and multi-tenant capabilities, not only in term of partitioning network capacity among multiple tenants, but also by offering dynamic processing capabilities on-demand, optimally deployed close to the end-users. Furthermore, the Small Cell (SC) concept will be further enriched in the context of B5G/6G with virtualization and edge computing capabilities, so that to support improved cellular coverage, capacity and applications for homes and enterprises, as well as dense metropolitan and rural public spaces in a purely dynamic and flexible manner.

The potential benefits from such a combined approach of Network Virtualization, Edge Computing and Small Cells with the aim of improving network management, trigger the interest of Communications Service Providers – CSPs (such as Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) and/or Over-The-Top (OTT) content and service providers), by generating the emerging of new business models and allowing them to gain an extra share in the network market by pursuing emerging business models.

Correlation between the above conceptual approach and AI-based and/or ML-based tools may be the “key issue” for a variety of factors that could ensure the proper development and exploitation of 5G/6G telecommunications infrastructures in modern economies!

Current experimental platforms for 5G/5BG/6G in Europe are the results of private and public joint efforts at national and European level. Accelerating trial capabilities and other pilots, the related platforms remain subject to continuous efforts targeting the full 5G and B5G picture and future evolutions. As such, actual 5G infrastructure deployment roadmap is highly dependent on the capability to deliver relevant and comprehensive set of platforms addressing remaining gaps & appearing challenges.

From a high-level perspective, one way to “view” the B5G/6G ecosystem can be in terms of Platforms (i.e.: Hardware (HW) and Software (SW)), Services and Use Cases (UCs). For new Platforms and Services to be created and become applicable in the market sector, investment and development are required. More than evident, key decisions need to be taken, both business-wise and technically. Business cases have so to be developed, while tests, trials and evaluations conducted to satisfy the various stakeholders need to be performed. Considering the vertical sectors, these will make use of the new Platforms and Services and will generate innovative Use Cases for their particular sector. Again, investment and development will be required (new processes or ways of doing business may need to be considered), key decisions will be taken, business cases will be developed and evaluations need to be conducted.

Here, the critical challenge for the market becomes the provision of appropriate 5G/B5G/6G infrastructures that will have the inherent capacity, capability, reliability, availability and security to provide this seamless life support in a timely and sustainable way. This new network infrastructure has to be capable of connecting people, processes, hardware and computer centres, content, knowledge, information, goods, and other “things” at high speed according to a multiplicity of application specific requirements. For these reasons 5G/B5G/6G is not just an evolution; it is a pure revolutionary process that implicates for appropriate plans and suitable applied measurements!

Although several Releases of 5G specifications have been finalized and related commercial products are already available to a great extent in the global market, the evolution of what is called as “Beyond 5G” (“B5G”) networks is a continuous process that has considerable impact on the provision of novel services as well as on the wider electronic communications sector. The support of emerging applications that gradually appear (e.g., Internet of senses, holographic communications, full autonomous driving, etc.) will undoubtedly require the improvement of the offered capabilities of B5G systems in terms of some suitable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by at least an order of magnitude, if compared to existing 5G ones. Furthermore, new innovations are closely related to social inclusion and personal well-being, as well as the digital transformation of industries and businesses and are dependent upon the offering of appropriate NetApps. These changes implicate for a flexible and programmable architecture to satisfy the large diversity of use cases and of related applications, practically covering a broad framework of verticals in diverse market sectors. In addition, there are actual trends that the next generation of networks beyond 5G will go from “software-centric” towards the concept of “human-centric”, implicating that human skills, activities and behaviours shall be considered together with the use of automated functions to support them. The expected corresponding benefits can include, inter-alia, reduction of risks, higher rates of compliance, enhanced management support and improved interaction with the involved end-users. Such modern functionalities, however, need to be adopted to the underlying infrastructures in parallel with more advanced security and privacy schemes so that to safeguard sensitive information for the participating users.

Corresponding usage scenarios require that the well-known Key Performance Indicators – KPIs (e.g., peak data rate, user-experienced data rate, spectrum efficiency, area traffic capacity, connection density, mobility, latency, reliability, security, privacy and resilience) need to be further enhanced and extended in values where 5G cannot deliver today. Current 5G-based KPIs have been defined by several Standard Developing Organizations (SDOs) and several tools are now available in different communities for performing corresponding measurements. However, 6G also defines new capabilities such as, for example, coverage, sensing-related capabilities, AI-related capabilities, sustainability, interoperability and positioning. For several among these new aspects, there are no existing clearly defined metrics. New methodologies (e.g., Key Value Indicators (KVIs)) and widely accepted related frameworks need to be developed, in order to provide appropriate solutions, per case. Using KVIs when developing 6G serves two essential purposes that is: (i) to demonstrate and validate that 6G would contribute towards meeting diverse societal needs, and; (ii) to impact technology development in a value-benefitting direction. Thus, it can be expected that 6G networks will further enhance KPIs and will develop and exploit innovative sets of UCs characterized by high Quality of Services (QoS) and high Quality of Experiences (QoE). These will help further to digitize economy and society, bringing new revenues and improving living standards.

Among others, the 10^th Workshop on “B5G-/6G- Putting Intelligence at the Network Edge” aims to investigate and give answers to the following research questions:

• What are the requirements for the successful “combination” of the three fundamental concepts, (i.e. NFV, Small Cells and Edge Computing), towards serving more efficient network management?
• How the above concepts could be correlated to suitable autonomic-cognitive cycles?
• How SON functionalities can be integrated in modern 5G/B5G/6G infrastructures and how such functionalities can be enhanced through appropriate AI-based tools?
• Which applications/services may benefit most, e.g., Internet of Things and Fog Computing?
• Which may be the new business models that may arise due to the “Intelligence at the network edge”?
• How progress at the network edge can support development of 5G-/B5G-based solutions, especially relevant to verticals?
• How evolution of innovation at the network edge can support the establishment and the operation of platforms to act as real “B5G/6G enablers”?
• What are the security and privacy implications of placing intelligence at the network edge?
• How to guarantee continuity and quality of service, also within the framework of the wider “quality of experience”, while placing intelligence at the network edge?
• Are there any foreseen trade-offs, e.g., low latency vs. increase of intra-domain traffic?
• How to handle the explosion of the traffic and provide the necessary capacity and spectrum?
• How to flexibly accommodate novel classes of services (IoT, M2M, or content-based, and others which are not known today) whilst keeping low CAPEX and OPEX?
• How to develop use cases of interest in verticals and to examine opportunities for growth in the broader telecommunications market?
• How to promote new applications in the fields of network softwarization and virtualization?
• How to develop the Small Cell-as-a-Service (SCaaS) context in 5G-/B5G-/6G- oriented scenarios?
• How to propose suitable business models to fulfill expectations originating from 5G/B5G/6G?
• How can regulation affect the expected B5G/6G deployment and growth?
• What are the challenges implicated by the fast growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning, especially towards the expected evolution of “Beyond 5G networks”?
• How B5G networks and applications are expected to create new opportunities for growth in the market and create new paths for revenues?

Aiming to “delineate” the expected transition towards 6G, the B5G-PINE 2025 Workshop will be strongly supported by the framework proposed by the on-going EU-funded (Horizon SNS-JU) project “6G-PATH” (“6G Pilots and Trials Through Europe”), https://6gpath.eu/, Grant Agreement No.101139172.

6G-PATH’s goal is to help foster the further development and integration of new and improved tools and products from EU companies with B5G/6G, while also measuring relevant KPIs and KVIs. The evolution of mobile telecommunications brought by 5G has been a global success, as demonstrated by the commercially available deployments worldwide leveraging the technology and majorly improving mobile services. These improvements include greater performance, flexibility and scalability, with benefits for a whole ecosystem of end-users, operators and technology providers. However, now that 5G is somehow a mainstream technology, it is vital to aim for “what comes next”. It is therefore essential that requirements are set and that new and demanding Use Cases (UCs) are specified, as means of setting the challenges for 6G and supporting its validation in realistic scenarios.

To achieve this, seven (-7-) dedicated testbeds will be part of the project consortium, which will be used by ten (-10-) use cases spread across four (-4-) key verticals of the market (i.e.: Farming, Education, Healthcare and Smart Cities). 6G-PATH’s strong correlation to real-market needs comes from the selection of specific use cases that will offer increased benefits, in multiple aspects (technological, financial-business, social, ethical and many more). The UCs are: water saving and smart vineyards for the Farming vertical; XR rural school, creation of the classroom of the future and XR health training for the Education vertical; 3D hydrogel patches and elderly monitoring for the Health vertical, and; Connected and sensing city, automated logistics and security coordination for the Smart Cities vertical.

The involved testbed facilities shall play a critical role in advancing the development and deployment of 6G networks. They provide a means of testing and validating new technologies, applications and services before their deployment in real-world scenarios. Therefore, 6G-PATH will explore the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Value Indicators (KVIs) critical to assessing their effectiveness. These include communication KPIs such as latency, bandwidth, outage probability and energy efficiency. Additionally, the project will investigate the evolution of capabilities, including location accuracy and timeliness, end-to-end measurements, latency and AI network energy efficiency, among others. Furthermore, 6G-PATH will explore throughput, latency, reliability and quality of experience (QoE), which are essential KPIs in assessing how end-users perceive the quality of a 6G-enabled application or service. Lastly, the project will look at deployment flexibility and service availability, which are crucial indicators in reducing barriers for developers and product adoption.

In the detailed context for Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP), the project envisions the integration of two (2) new pilot sites, extension of the testbeds with ten (10) additional technologies as well as thirty (30) new Use Cases, through dedicated Open Calls, to further involve the community and obtain more metrics and outcomes.

6G-PATH’s ultimate goal is the creation of a number of geographically distributed 6G-ready testbeds with essential and advanced features for a large variety of vertical use cases (UCs) from the project’s vertical partners and prospective third parties interested in deploying and testing their use cases, within large scale pilots and trials. For realizing this ambition, 6G-PATH plans to work closely with other ongoing/starting SNS JU Stream-B and Stream-C projects in a “feedback” loop, to promote innovation and exploit both knowledge and experiences gain from ongoing research initiatives.

The thematic of the Workshop touches upon the research domains explored by the EU-funded (Horizon SNS-JU) “SUNRISE-6G” (“SUstainable federation of Research Infrastructures for Scaling-up Experimentation in 6G”) project¸ https://sunrise6g.eu/, Grant Agreement No.101139257.

The SUNRISE-6G approach is inspired by the “Network of Networks” concept of 6G Networks, aiming to integrate all private and public infrastructures under a massively scalable internet-like architecture. The project aspires to create a federation of 6G test infrastructures, in a pan-European facility that will support converged Testing as-a-Service (TaaS) workflows and tools, a unified catalogue of 6G enablers publicly accessible by experimenters as well as cross-domain vertical application onboarding. Experimentation and vertical application onboarding are to be offered via a Tenant Web Portal that acts as a single-entry point to the facility. The project proposes a scalable, open and standards-compliant approach to experimentation and vertical application deployment in a pan-European Federation of 6G infrastructures that provides access to a comprehensive library of 6G enablers. SUNRISE-6G examines several innovation areas: (i) New Service APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for RAN (Radio Access Network) exposure, cross-domain vertical deployment and Digital Twinning; (ii) native AI integration of testbeds towards Intent-Driven Lifecycle Management (IDLM) of experimentation processes; (iii) near-field RIS and integrated communication and sensing; (iv) joint communications and sensing in disaggregated networks, and; (v) Non-Terrestrial 6G network access.

The project execution is based on 4 pillars, delivering: (i) The Implementation of new 6G enablers, complementary to existing ones being developed in previous SNS JU Phase 1 projects; (ii) a truly scalable and 3GPP compliant Federation solution that provides access to heterogeneous resources and devices from all Europe; (iii) a Federated AI plane aligned with AIaaS (AI as-a-Service) and MLOPS (Machine Learning Operations) paradigms which promotes a collaborative approach to AI research, benefitting immensely from scaling-up datasets and models, and; (iv) a commonly adopted Experimentation Plane, which offers common workflows to experimenters.

Another pillar of the Workshop has been the dynamic framework promoted by the I3-PJG “AMBITIOUS” (“Advanced CoMputing Continuum Solutions for Boosting DigITalization across European RegionS”) project, https://ambitious-project.eu/, (Grant Agreement No.101115116.

5G is not only a new radio access technology offering higher data rates and lower latencies, but it is considered as an enabler for supporting cutting edge tools and applications in the new era of computing continuum (that mixes Cloud, Edge and IoT resources). The resulting new technology platform enables developers to deploy their software not only centrally in the cloud and distributed in the end-users’ laptops and mobile phones, but also at the network edge. This new architecture paves the way for new business models, value chains, and deployment models offering SMEs to serve their clients even better with highly responsive applications and services. Systems could be designed to be more fault tolerant and robust using a combination of backend components deployed centrally and closer to the end-users.

The main goal of AMBITIOUS is to provide a fundamental technological infrastructure, which will provide advanced data aggregation and clean-up, analytics, AI-enabled forecasting and secure information exchange mechanisms, via a transparent computing continuum infrastructure, to be integrated with existing, mature services (of at least TRL6) of the relevant stakeholders (SMEs), unleashing for them yet unforeseen functionalities and opening up new pathways of commercial exploitation. The envisaged fundamental infrastructure will be provided via the deployment of technological pillars, which will interact with existing services towards supporting the envisioned functionalities. Pillars are technological solutions answering crucial challenges of customers in different real-life situations that require reaction and prevention. Monitoring real-time situations, predicting of unexpected hazard occurrences or health conditions safeguarding are activities that can be highly enhanced with digital solutions in today´s world. These solutions aim at advancing the European companies in areas such as data analytics, AI, 5G, computing continuum and IoT. The solutions will be demonstrated by a diverse set of specific use cases in the sectors of safety, smart water management, precise agriculture, and innovative digital health and wellbeing services.

In addition, the effort is also to be oriented to the context of the to the on-going EU-funded (Horizon SNS-JU) “6G-INTENSE” (“Intent-driven NaTive AI architecturE supporting Network-Compute abstraction and Sensing at the Deep Edge”) project, https://6g-intense.eu/, (Grant Agreement No.101139266.

While 5G changed the landscape of mobile networks in a profound way, with an evolved architecture supporting increased capacity, spectral efficiency, and flexibility, the fast growth of data-hungry, human-centered applications (e.g., the emerging Social VR (virtual reality) / XR (extended reality) paradigms, termed the Metaverse) will soon exceed its capabilities. To this end, both industry and academia are racing to shape the next-generation communication ecosystem, namely 6G, as the platform for driving the digitization of society, which is currently underway. The 6G Smart Networks of the future will provide the high-performance and energy-efficient infrastructure on which next generation internet and other services can be developed and deployed. This will foster an industry revolution and digital transformation and will accelerate the building of smart societies leading to quality-of-life improvements, facilitating autonomous systems, haptic communication and smart healthcare.

To achieve the aforementioned objectives in a sustainable way, it is well understood that new approaches are needed in the way the telco infrastructures are architected, federated and orchestrated. These new approaches call for multi-stakeholder ecosystems that promote synergies among MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) and owners of all kinds or computational and networking resources that will share the extraordinary costs of yet another generation upgrade from 5G to 6G, while facilitating new business models. As the new architecture paradigms bring unprecedented complexity due to the sheer scale and heterogeneity of the orchestration domains involved, which should be matched by equally capable automation capabilities, 6G is aiming for the “holy grail” of pervasive AI-driven intelligence, termed as Native AI. However, Native AI needs a totally new design of the System Architecture, with automation deeply ingrained in the design of components. This is where 6G-INTENSE steps in, proposing a new System Architecture for 6G, to deliver “6G as a Smart Service Execution platform”, fully in line with the vision of sustainable infrastructure sharing to reduce space and energy costs, and encouraging collaboration among all members of the value chain under a unified Network-Compute fabric. Key contribution is a novel automation architecture with a Native AI toolkit facilitating intent declaration, negotiation and decision automation across autonomous domains, termed as Distributed Intent-driven Management and Orchestration (DIMO). Moreover, Sensing is adopted as a key enabler, helping navigate the complexities and lack of reliability of the deep edge.

The context of the B5G-PINE 2025 Workshop is also relevant to the one proposed by the ongoing EU-funded (Horizon SNS-JU) “6G-DALI” (“6G DAta and ML operations automation via an end-to-end AI framework”) project, Grant Agreement No.101192750.

One of the key enablers of 6G is undoubtedly the Native support of AI/ML at all the system levels, components, and mechanisms, from the orchestration and management levels to the low-level optimization of the infrastructure resources, including Cloud, Edge, RAN, Core Network, as well as a transport network. Despite the opportunities, there are several gaps that hinder the adoption of AI/ML in 6G, such as the lack of extensive and high-quality datasets that are required to train the models. On the other hand, AI model testing and performance evaluation in a representative staging environment

(by emulation or real deployment) is also challenging without access to an end-to-end 6G testbed or representative Digital Twin environment. To this end, 6G-DALI aims to deliver an end-to-end AI framework for 6G, structured in two interdependent pillars: (i) AI experimentation as a service via MLOps (Machine Learning Operations), and; (ii) Data and analytics collection and storage via DataOps. The 6G-DALI DataOps pillar provides the mechanisms for preparing clean and processed data that are stored within a 6G Dataspace and are made available for training and validating machine learning models as a service, a part of the MLOps Pillar. The end-to-end framework also delivers continuous monitoring, drift detection and retraining of models. Finally, 6G-DALI will deliver open datasets, a 6G Dataspace for dataset storage and secure sharing, and a Digital Twin testbed for data generation on demand.

Relevance of the related actions will also be about the framework of the EU-funded (Horizon Work Program) project “OASEES” (“Open Autonomous programmable cloud appS & smart EdgE Sensors”), https://oasees-project.eu/, Grant Agreement No.101092702).

The massive increase in device connectivity and generated data has resulted in the proliferation of intelligent processing services to create insights and exploit data in a multi-modal manner. Currently, the most powerful data processing operates in a centralized manner in the cloud, which provides the ability to scale and allocate resources on demand and efficiently. Centralized processing and cloud hosting, bound and limit their services and applications to operate in a resource restricted manner, relying usually on large single entities to provide: (i) authentication; (ii) data storage; (iii) data processing; (iv) connectivity; (v) vendor-locked environments for development and orchestration. This significantly limits the user from its data governance and even identity management. In a similar way, existing solutions for edge device authentication require a centralized entity to trust them and authenticate them, rendering a non-portable identification paradigm. OASEES aims to create an open, decentralized, intelligent, programmable edge framework for Swarm architectures and applications, leveraging the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) paradigm and integrating Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) processes for efficient decision making. The OASEES vision is to provide the open tools and secure environments for swarm programming and orchestration for numerous fields, in a completely decentralized manner.

The intended context is also affected by the conceptual framework of the EU-funded (Horizon JU SNS Work Program) project “6G-BRICKS” (“Building Reusable testbed Infrastructures for validating Cloud-to-device breaKthrough technologieS”), https://6g-bricks.eu/, Grant Agreement No.101096954.

6G networks, currently only existing as concepts, are envisioned as portals to a fully digitized society, where the physical and virtual world are blended via boundless Extended Reality (XR), and also as an enabler for the Digital and Green transformation of the European Industries. To support this vision, the network capacity must be increased at least by an order of magnitude, while infrastructures must be transformed into a very dense continuum. Thus, academia and industry have shifted their attention to the investigation of a new generation of Smart Networks and infrastructures. Aiming to win this race towards shaping the next-generation communication ecosystem, a new generation of testbed infrastructures and breakthrough research and technology development is needed, as well as a new generation of testbeds to support future research initiative. To this end, 6G-BRICKS aims to deliver a new 6G facility, building on the baseline of mature ICT-52 platforms, that bring breakthrough cell-free and RIS (Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface) technologies that have shown promise for beyond 5G networks. Moreover, novel unified control paradigms based on Explainable AI and Machine Reasoning are explored.

The intended context is also affected by the conceptual framework of the EU-funded (Horizon) “Cyber NEMO” (“End-to-end Cybersecurity to NEMO meta-OS”) project, https://cybernemo.eu/, Grant Agreement No.101168182. 

This project builds on top of the prior NEMO project to add end-to-end cybersecurity and trust on IoT-Edge-Cloud-Data Computing Continuum (CC). A cybersecure and trusted CC of IoT/Edge/Cloud/Data will bring great benefits. However, with less data stored and processed in central data centres and more data processed closer to the user, cybersecurity, privacy and security breaches will no longer be able to focus on protecting central points of connection (POC), but consider any segment as non-trusted. Thus, CyberNEMO will establish itself as a paradigm-shift to support resilience, risk preparedness, awareness, detection and mitigation within Critical Infrastructures (CI) deployments and across supply chains. To achieve technology maturity and massive adoption, CyberNEMO will not “reinvent the wheel”, but leverages on existing by-design, by-innovation and by-collaboration zero-trust cybersecurity and privacy protection systems; it also introduces novel concepts, methods, tools, testing facilities and engagement campaigns to intending to create sustainable innovation, already evident within the project lifetime. CyberNEMO considers cybersecure federated on-device ML and data sovereignty tools as core components to its architecture. This will enable, time critical cybersecurity decision and malware removal to take place on the IoT nodes, while more complex and computing intensive decisions to take place at the edge or the cloud in a cybersecure and trusted CC. The project will offer end-to-end and full stack protection, ranging from a low level Zero-Trust Network Access layer up to a human AI explainable Situation Perception, Comprehension & Protection (SPCP) framework and tools, collaborative micro-services Auditing, Certification & Accreditation and a pan-European Knowledge Sharing, risk Assessment, threat Analysis and incidents Mitigation (SAAM) collaborative platform. Validation and penetration testing will take place in 6 pilots including OneLab for integration, various Critical Infrastructures (Energy, Water, Healthcare), media distribution, agrifood and fintech supply chain, along with their cross-domain, cross-border federation. Sustainability and adoption will be offered via the de-facto European Open source Eclipse Foundation ecosystem.

Strong feedback will also be provided by the framework of the “DATAMITE” HORIZON project (“DATA Monetization, Interoperability, Trading & Exchange”), https://datamite-horizon.eu/, Grant Agreement No.101092989), that foresees to revolutionize the European Data Market by helping users, such SMEs, large enterprises and public administrations, to better monetize, govern and enhance the trust of their data, empowering them to become new relevant players in the data economy. DATAMITE empowers European companies by delivering a modular, open-source and multi-domain Framework to improve DATA Monetizing, Interoperability, Trading and Exchange, in the form of software modules, training, and business materials. In particular, this project unleashes the monetization potential at two levels, that is: (i) At internal level, users will have tools to improve quality management of their data, the adherence to FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) principles and will be able to upskill on technical and business aspects thanks to the multiple open-source training materials the project will generate; therefore, data will become trustable and more reliable also in other paradigms like Artificial Intelligence (AI), and; (ii) at external level, keeping users in control of their data will provide new sources of revenue and interaction with other stakeholders. DATAMITE will validate its results in three (3) different use cases with a total of six (6) pilots, demonstrating that the related framework is interoperable and usable in different domains and user needs, as: (i) Intra-corporate, multi-domain data exchange; (ii) data trading among Data Spaces, and; (iii) integration with other initiatives as Data Markets, EU AI-on-demand platform or DIHs (Digital Innovation Hubs). Sectors of prime importance covered by the pilots are: agriculture, energy, industrial and manufacturing and climate.

The above “joint approach” is expected to “delineate” a new conceptual approach with dedicated paradigms and scenarios of use of market significance that can serve as “guidelines” for any further evolution process.

Among the “core” aims will be the structuring of a novel B5G-/6G-oriented network architecture that will be able to serve not only modern mobile broadband applications/services but simultaneously multiple domains coming from vertical industries, thus promoting 5G inclusion in a variety of market sectors (such as automotive, health, transportation, tourism, agriculture, industry, media and many more).

It is expected that other European Horizon and SNS-JU projects actually having cooperation with 6G-PATH, SUNRISE-6G, AMBITIOUS, 6G-INTENSE, 5G-DALI, OASEES, 6G-BRICKS, CyberNEMO and DATAMITE are also to “join” the 10^th “B5G-PINE” Workshop, by providing results and/or other experiences based upon their progress.

The 1^st 5G-PINE Workshop has been organized in the context of the AIAI-2016 International Conference (Thessaloniki, Greece, September 2016).

The 2^nd 5G-PINE Workshop has been organized in the context of the EANN-2017 International Conference (Athens, Greece, August 2017).

The 3^rd 5G-PINE Workshop has been organized in the context of the AIAI-2018 International Conference (Rhodes, Greece, May 2018).

The 4^th 5G-PINE Workshop has been organized in the context of the AIAI-2019 International Conference (Hersonissos, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, May 2019).

The 5^th 5G-PINE Workshop has been virtually organized in the context of the AIAI-2020 International Conference (Chalkidiki, Greece, June 2020).

The 6^th 5G-PINE Workshop has been virtually organized in the context of the AIAI-2021 International Conference (Hersonissos, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 2021).

The 7^th 5G-PINE Workshop has been virtually organized in the context of the AIAI-2022 International Conference (Hersonissos, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 2022).

The 8^th 5G-PINE Workshop has been organized in the context of the AIAI-2023 International Conference (Léon, Spain, June 2023).

The 9^th 5G-PINE Workshop has been organized in the context of the AIAI-2024 International Conference (Corfu, Greece, June 2024).

The actual 10^th B5G-PINE Workshop is proposed in the context of the AIAI-2025 International Conference as a conceptual “continuity” of the previous workshops, but now it should be more oriented to AI-based solutions and challenges, in order to promote solutions for more enhanced network management in modern B5G networks. Among others, special emphasis is to be given to actual trials and related efforts at European and at global level, promoting the validation and adoption of modern 5G-based solution and services.  

This is to take place according to the technical progress and the evolution of the 9 main organising projects (i.e.: 6G-PATH, SUNRISE-6G, AMBITIOUS, 6G-INTENSE, 6G-DALI, OASEES, 6G-BRICKS, CyberNEMO and DATAMITE), as well as to the evolution of other EU projects.

The 10^th B5G-PINE Workshop intends to realize a framework of an open and interactive cooperation and for exchanging ideas, knowledge and practices between several EU-funded projects covering several among the identified specific topics and possible application areas (as discussed in the section below).