Motivation

MOTIVATION

ALLEGRO addresses the Horizon Europe Framework Programme, focused on the topic HORIZON-CL4-2022-DIGITAL-EMERGING-01-39: Ultra-low energy and secure networks.

The objectives of ALLEGRO are carefully derived to address the specific challenges and scope of the work programme, in particular to:

  1. Reinforce European leadership in connectivity, devices and service infrastructure, with European capabilities in shaping future connectivity standards;
  2. A digital and green transition towards low carbon footprint of connectivity platforms;
  • Enabling most demanding industrial use cases requiring a very high grade of quality of service (QoS) and performances (real-time sub-ms latency and secure applications).

ALLEGRO brings together a multidisciplinary team with a strong scientific breakthrough in:

  • PIC design, fabrication & packaging;
  • Optical transport; and
  • Secure optical networks & network orchestration,

ALLEGRO will work towards lifting key technological roadblocks:

  • Technology for ultra-high energy efficiency and capacity, with optical functions replacing power-hungry electronics, towards the realisation of E2E all-optical networks. It aims at replacing electro-optical interfaces and their management by low-power ones and targets the extension to new wavelength bands to reach rates of 10 Tb/s for optoelectronic interfaces and over 1 P/s for optical fibre systems, thanks to multi-fiber & multi-band.
  • Technology for ultra-high security and reliability, targeting improvements needed to reach E2E very high grade of security levels. Post-quantum replacements of current algorithms or provable and long-term secure data transmission of highly sensitive information is in scope, as well as novel research directions like physical layer security for optical networks.
  • Use cases may target highly integrated radio-optical networks, coping with a multiplicity of scenarios requiring different functional splits between different network parts, enabling optimal low-cost operations of integrated fronthaul-backhaul and deterministic network behaviour for specific applications requiring ultra-low latency.