5G Trial in L’Aquila

The city of L’Aquila has been selected among the 5 Italian cities (Bari, L’Aquila, Matera, Milano, Prato) that will host the experimental phase of 5G technolgy. 5G is a disruptive technology that will support applications requiring ultrareliable communication systems, offering extremely high quality of service in terms of bandwidth and latency.

The innovative projects and activities that are now ongoing in the city of L’Aquila offer a favourable environment for the 5G experimentation where it will be possibile to benefits of service spanning from monitoring of environment and trasport infrastructures to cultural heritage through ICT.

The 5G trial will be carried out through a collaboration among Telco Operators, Technology Vendors, Universities, Research Centers and service providers.

DESDEMONA by INCIPICT

On March 18 has been signed the Grant Agreement n. 800687 – DEtection of Steel DEfects by Enhanced MONitoring and Automated procedure for self-inspection and maintenance — DESDEMONA – between the European Union and ‘the coordinator’ SAPIENZA University of Rome, and the following other beneficiaries

• Universidad de Castilla – la Mancha (UCLM)
• Universidade do Porto (UPORTO)
• Università di Pisa (UNIPI)
• Institut Francais des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l’Amenagement et des Reseaux (IFSTTAR)
• AIVIEWGROUP srl (AIVIEWGROUPl)
• Sixense Systems (SIXENSE)
• ECISA compania general de construcciones sa (ECISA)

The estimated eligible costs of the action are EUR 2,200,885.75 and the ‘maximum grant amount’ is EUR 1,320,531.45. Prof. Vincenzo Gattulli is the PI investigator and Coordinator of DESDEMONA. The project proposal has grown during the development of the research INCIPICT activities in the scientific area of structural monitoring.

DESDEMONA objective is the development of novel design methods, systems, procedure and technical solution, to integrate sensing and automation technologies for the purpose of self-inspection and self-monitoring of steel structures. The approach will lead to an increment of the service life of existing and new steel civil and industrial infrastructure and to a decrease in the cost associated to inspections, improving human activities performed in difficult conditions, safety and workers’ potential by the use of advanced tools. The research aims to expand beyond the current state-of-the-art new high-quality standard and practices for steel structure inspection and maintenance through the interrelated development of the following actions:

1. steel structure geometry and condition virtualization through data fusion of image processing, thermography and vibration measurements;
2. developing of procedure for steel defect detection by robotic and automatic systems such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and ground mobile robots
3. embedding sensor systems to revalorize and transform steel elements and structures into self-diagnostic (smart) elements and materials even through nanotechnologies,realizing an experimental lab-based apparatus and a series of case studies inspected by intelligent and robotic systems.

The project outcome will have an impact on the reduction of the cost of steel structures inspection and maintenance and on the increase of user safety and comfort in industrial and civil environment. The proposal with a multidisciplinary approach fulfils the objectives of the Strategic Research Agenda of the European Steel Technology Platform.

INCIPICT @ OFC2017

Record presence of INCIPICT at OFC 2018, the most important world conference of optical communications (https://www.ofcconference.org/en-us/home/), which takes place in San Diego attracting over 15000 participants from all over the world . The Incipict team counts an invited presentation [1], three oral contributions [2-4], and the organization of a workshop (https://www.ofcconference.org/en-us/home/program-speakers/ workshops / when-will-we-need-to-stairs /). There will also be two sessions [5,6] dedicated to the Kramers-Kronig receiver recently proposed within INCIPICT.

[1] Antonio Mecozzi, Cristian Antonelli, Mark Shtaif, Xi Chen, Sethumadhavan Chandrasekhar, Peter J. Winzer, “The Kramers-Kronig Receiver,” Paper Tu2D.1
[2] Marco Presi, Giulio Cossu, Giampiero Contestabile, Ernesto Ciaramella, Cristian Antonelli, Antonio Mecozzi, Mark Shtaif, “Transmission in 125-km SMF with 3.9 bit/s/Hz Spectral Efficiency using a Single-drive Mzm and a Direct detection Kramers-Kronig Receiver without Optical CD Compensation,” Paper Tu2D.3
[3] Lior Blech, Yonina Eldar, Cristian Antonelli, Antonio Mecozzi, Mark Shtaif, “The enhanced Kramers-Kronig receiver,” Paper Tu2D.7
[4] Andrea Marotta, Koteswararao Kondepu, Dajana Cassioli, Cristian Antonelli, Luis M. Correia, Luca Valcarenghi, “Software Defined 5G Converged Access as a Viable Techno-economic Solution,” Paper Th1B.2
[5] Tu2D – Kramers-Kronig Transmissions
[6] W4E – Kramers -Kronig Receivers