Search2nd Open Call information day presentations
The second open call information daysuccessfully took place in Brussels on 14 September 2011. All presentations are available at the 
event pages. For any further information please contact us.
Report from the 2nd FIRE open calls information day
1. 
Agenda
2. Welcome
Tasos Gavras chaired this 2nd FIRE Open Call meeting and opened the morning plenary session by welcoming the participants and summarising the programme for the day.
Per Blixt (Head of the FIRE Unit/DG Infso F4) welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked the participants for their interest in the Open Call process and the projects SmartSantander, CREW and OpenLab for their willingness to present their opportunities to introduce new partners with innovative experiments.
He also reminded the participants about the Call 8 opportunities (deadline mid-January 2012) for STREPs and one large IP (€8M). He suggested that the large IP might also include an Open Call process.
Manuel Monteiro (Deputy Head of the FIRE Unit) explained the organisational aspects of the day, before presenting an overview of the FIRE concept of experimentally-driven research and its positioning within Challenge 1.
He then summarised the key administrative procedures associated with Open Calls:
- Who can participate?
o research institutes, universities, SMEs, industry
- What are the rules?
o similar evaluation process as for regular EC calls
- What is the budget?
o €5M in total, over the duration of the IP projects ; €200k maximum per experiment
- How to participate?
o submit a proposal
o if successful, you will join the consortium as a normal partner
- What are the IPR rules?
o these must be negotiated with the facility provider, but IP can be protected
- Who will evaluate the proposals?
o In accordance with EC rules, the proposals will be evaluated by independednt evaluators. The independence is checked by the EC
Manuel added that it is very important to include the correct identifier in the «Subject» line of the mail containing the submitted proposal, so that it can be routed to the appropriate evaluation committee and also traced, in case of loss. It is also important for proposers to check that they receive an «Acknowledgement of Receipt» and to react quickly if they do not.
Finally, he thanked FIRE STATION for supporting the event and recommended participants to contact FIRE STATION if they needed further general information: contact(at)ict-fire.eu
Q1: What were the statistics from the 1st Open Calls?
Manuel gave figures from BonFIRE as an example (3 or 4 experiments accepted out of 29 proposals)
Tasos said that the figures for all the projects are available on the FIRE Website: www.ict-fire.eu
3. CREW
Ingrid Moerman, IBBT, presented the goals of the CREW project and described the 5 existing local testbeds that together form the CREW platform for experiments. Each testbed has a specific wireless/sensor network focus. The current project partners are able support experiments with tools and expertise. CREW expects to get feedback from expermenters.
Ingrid gave further details of the offerings in each of the 4 testbeds (ie. all but Slovenia) that are available for use in this Open Call.
Typical types of experiments are described in the CREW public deliverable D2.1. These include:
- Vertical resource sharing
- Horizontal resource sharing
- Robustness and QoS
- Spectrum sensing solutions
... in different spectral bands: IMS, TV band, LTE/cellular systems.
The project is looking for innnovative experiments using more than one testbed, or proposals that integrate additional cognitive components. She stressed that the Open Call is for experiments (not design and development). Proposers may bring in their own hardware.
The successful experiments should add value to the CREW testbed and it would be appreciated if the added features could be left in the project for the longer term. Conditions can be agreed for giving access to the new foreground brought in by the new partners.
Ingrid remarked that – since the proposal submission and evaluation process must follow the regular FP7 rules – the contents of all the proposals which are not accepted for funding remain confidential. She requested proposers to indicate if information about their proposals (if not retained) could be made available to the partners, so that the opportunity could be taken to discuss subsequent non-funded collaboration, if there was sufficient interest from both sides.
Interested parties were encouraged to subscribe to the CREW newsletter to get more information.
Key data:
- Budget = €400k (ie. 3-5 experiments of €50k – €200k
- 1 or 2 partners per experiment
- 12 months maximum duration
- Submission deadline is October 19th, 17:00
- Evaluation results are expected in December
- Integration of the new partner(s) expected in January 2012
- Address for submission: ict(at)ec.europa.eu
Further useful documents are available via the CREW Open Call Website (http://www.crew-project.eu/opencallinfo), including:
- Open call announcement
- Guide for applicatnts
- CREW Consortium Agreement
- Slides of this presentation
- Contact persons for the testbeds and details about their specific technlogies
Q1: Can an experiment propose to extend the CREW platform?
Ingrid answered that the expected approach will be that successful proposals will bring new algorithms, tools, or equipment to the CREW platform. These items should already exist, but may be refined through the interactive experimentation period. In the ideal case, the resulting «product» would be made available for CREW to use after the end of the experimentation, thereby enhancing the overall CREW offer.
Q2: Is there one common control system for the whole CREW platform?
Ingrid answered that there is not one uniform method, since the islands are very diverse. However, there is one common data format for exchanging data between the islands. The CREW «Portal» gives users clear guidance as to how to use each testbed.
4. SmartSantander
Luis Muñoz, UC, gave an overview of the SmartSantander city-scale facility for IoT research and explained the 3 phases of deployment:
- Phase 1 (Nov 2011): 2'000 IoT devices (mainly WSN and gateways)
- Phase 2 (Nov 2012): 5'000 IoT devices, including RFID, sensors, embedded gateway devices, etc.
- Phase 3 (August 2013): 20'000 IoT devices, federated with other FIRE facilities
He explained that it is a multi-faceted project, that targets:
- Researchers
- Service Providers (commercial service developers and ISPs)
- Citizens of Santander
Tools are available for reserving and configuring resources, deployment, execution control, monitoring, logging, etc.
There are 4 sites in the project:
- Guildford
- Belgrade
- Lubeck
- Santander (parking sensors, traffic management, environmental impact: sensors for temperature, light intensity, noise, CO). The regular citizen services can continue while experiments are taking place
3 kinds of experiments are envisioned (in priority order):
- Innovative applications and services for smart cities
- IoT middleware solutions
- IoT communication protocols and technologies
... typically with the goal of stress-testing, or enhancing the platform
Key data:
- Budget = €600k (ie. 4-6 experiments of €50k – €200k
- 1 or 2 partners per experiment
- Submission deadline is November 16th, 17:00
- Address for submission: ict(at)ec.europa.eu
Further useful documents are available via the SmartSantander Open Call Website (http://www.smartsantander.eu/index.php/open-calls)
Q1: Can you explain how the services are isolated from the experimentations?
Luis answered that this is achieved through replicated paths
Q2: Which locations are available for the 1st Open Call?
Luis answeed that all of the 4 sites can be used, but not in a federated way. He added that the entry point to each of the locations is uniform.
5. OpenLab
Timur Friedman (UPMC) summarised the OpenLab project as being a merger of the previous facility projects OneLab and Panlab. The focus of the project is on interoperability of heterogeneous testbeds and tools, which are brought into the project by the partners:
Testbeds:
- NITOS wireless testbed, being extended to 3G and LTE, connected to PlanetLab Europe
- w-iLab.t (IBBT)
- .SEL (delay-tolerant, opportunistic testbed)
- PlanetLab Europe (140 member institutions, over 1'600 users)
- HEN (Heterogeneous Experimental Network, emulation environment)
- NGN Test Centre (WIT, TSSG). IMS focused
- IMS testbed at the University of Patras
- GreenStar network (Canada), with a focus on green computing and the associated measurement of power consumption
- ETOMIC (high resolution (10ns) active measurements)
- SONoMA (wide-scale availability of best-in-class measurement tools)
Federation expertise and tools that are available include:
- SFA (Slice Federation Architecture) in conjunction with GENI
- MySlice
- Teagle (element of Teagle are RADL (Resource Adapter Description Language) and FSToolkit)
- OMF (probably the most broadly-used experiment controller for wireless testbeds, which includes montoring and measuremen evaluation)
- NEPI experiment controller
- OFP Open Flow
- IGW (Interconnection GateWays)
The following tools are also available:
- ns-3 simulator (from INRIA)
- network measurement Virtual Observatory (nmVO)
Key data:
- Budget = €550k (i.e. 4-6 experiments of €50k – €200k
- up to 3 partners per experiment
- Submission deadline is the 30th of November, 17:00 CET (Brussels time)
- Address for submission: http://www.ict-openlab.eu/open-calls.html
Experiments should preferably have a user-driven orientation.
Further useful documents are available via the OpenLab Open Call Website (http://www.ict-openlab.eu/news/newsdetails/article/opanlab-is-preparing-open-call-for-experiments.html)
Q1: Are experiments expected in the data plane or the control plane?
The project is open for experiments of any type as long as they are good ones. Proposers may send their requirements for tools and testbed facilities in advance and OpenLab partners will check if the experiment is feasible.
6. Open Networking Session
Q1: The time until the deadlines is short. How much information is required?
Ingrid replied that the format of the proposal has to follow the standard EC guidelines, however, the proposals can be quite short (typically a maximum of 25 pages) and the base information about the current project has been pre-filled so that only the new experiment part has to be added. The proposals will also be less complex because there are fewer partners.
Luis replied that it is similar for SmartSantander. The focus should be on providing information about the experiment (and dissemination).
Tasos added that FIRE STATION has published information, both for applicants and coordinators, available at http://www.ict-fire.eu/home/fire-calls/open-calls.html.
Q2: Is it a requirement to have already tested the solution?
Tasos answered that it is not a requirement, but it makes the experiment more risky.
Q3: Is it advantageous if the basis of the new experiment comes from an FP7 project?
Tasos said that, personally, he would like to see the further explotation of FP7 results, but this cannot be a formal requirement. The evaluators must respect the openness of the Call and be non-discriminatory.
Luis said that he encouraged non-traditional applicants to apply. He could imagine that industries with no previous experience of FP7 might want to use SmartSantander to test a pre-commecial service. Another group with no previous experience of FP7 could be a user community.
In concluding, it was confirmed that all the slides will be available via the FIRE Website at http://www.ict-fire.eu/events/meetings/2ndfireopencallsinformationday.html.
After lunch, the 3 projects organised their own parallel sessions for a more-detailed discussion of the technical aspects.
- Files:
mins_2011_09_14.pdf210 K