FRAUNHOFER INSTITUTE FOR OPEN COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

After a three-year break, more than 200 participants from 26 countries met again at the 9th FOKUS Media Web Symposium (MWS) in Berlin on June 21 and 22. Under the motto "And still diving deeper", the experts discussed topics such as Internet Delivered Media, 5G Media, streaming technologies, artificial intelligence, standardization, and market development.

Plug and Play Tech Center announced a new initiative focused on hydrogen by launching the H2 Startup Accelerator program. It’s one of the world’s first hydrogen-centric startup accelerator programs that will initially be operated out of Hamburg with support of Fraunhofer ISE and Fraunhofer FOKUS.

When it comes to activities such as fighting forest fires, monitoring construction sites or providing multimedia services at sports and other mass events, a reliable, secure 5G campus network is often needed locally and temporarily to ensure maximum network coverage on the entire site. Thanks to the 5G+ Nomadic Node from the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS, this kind of non-public, temporary network can be set up at short notice in order, for instance, to connect emergency forces with each other or control firefighting robots remotely. The entire hardware and software fits into a couple of mobile server rack containers. The operation of the adapted 5G mobile network with a satellite connection will be presented at the Hannover Messe 2022 from May 30 to June 2 at the joint Fraunhofer booth in Hall 5, Booth A06.

The ACM Mile-High Video (MHV) presents an annual Best Video Blog Post Award. Among the 23 nominees, the post “Common pitfalls in MPEG-DASH streaming” by Daniel Silhavy, Stefan Pham and Mariana Avelino took third place this year. In their blog, the scientists from Fraunhofer FOKUS regularly report on the latest research results in interactive media applications.

At the beginning of the year the flagship project CampusOS was launched. It is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) with 18,1 million euros over the next three years. The Fraunhofer Institutes HHI and FOKUS are coordinating the project. The goal of the project is to build a modular ecosystem for open 5G campus networks based on open radio technologies and interoperable network components. This will create vendor independence and enable more competition and innovation to empower the digital sovereignty of companies in Germany. To this end, 22 partners from industry and research are testing different operating models, developing reference architectures, and evaluating the interoperability and performance of integrated solutions in reference test areas. Beyond that, they are testing selected scenarios as prototypes in an industrial environment.

Europe's prosperity and competitiveness are largely based on technologies such as information and communication technologies, artificial intelligence, or the use of new or improved materials such as polymers, metals, or alloys. However, Europe is often dependent on non-European countries in these areas. In the recently published study “Key enabling technologies for Europe's technological sovereignty” both key technologies and key elements for Europe's technological sovereignty were defined and analyzed on behalf of the European Parliament. Scientists from Fraunhofer FOKUS collaborated on the study.