EuCNC 2018 (“5G and Beyond”) is the 27^th edition of a successful series of technical conferences in the field of telecommunications, sponsored by IEEE ComSoc and EURASIP, and financially supported by the European Commission, focusing on communication networks and systems, and reaching services and applications. It targeted to bring together researchers from all over the world to present their latest research results, being one of the main venues for showcasing, demonstrating and trialing the results of research projects, especially from successive European R&D programs. The Conference has taken place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from June 18-21, 2018^[1] (See Figure 29).

Figure 29: EuCNC 2018.

OTE as the 5G ESSENCE Project Coordinator and in cooperation with NCSRD, WI3 and UPC has organised a Special Session (SPS10) in the framework of this event, that is: “Small Cells deployment, network functions virtualisation and cloud computing as “Enablers” of innovative 5G services”. The related program is as depicted on Figure 30, below.

Details on the Special Session, including the technical programme can be found at the following URL: https://www.eucnc.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/EUCNC_2018_program_web.pdf

Figure 30: EuCNC 2018 – Special Session (SPS10) organised by 5G ESSENCE.

SPS10 has been comprised of 10 presentations, in total. Four of which came directly by the 5G ESSENCE, while the remaining ones came from other EU-funded projects, in particular from: (i) the H2020 Privacy Flag^[2] project; (ii) the H2020 VICINITY^[3] project; (iii) the H2020 RESISTO^[4] project; (iv) the YAKSHA^[5] project, and; (v) the H2020 CloudPerfect^[6] project. This has been important in the context of creating potential liaisons with other EU-funded projects. All presentations have also been accompanied by accepted papers included in the official proceedings of the EuCNC-2018 Conference.

All related papers of the SPS10 are listed as below (also see Figure 29):

• “Small Cells, NFV and Cloud Computing as Enablers for offering Innovative 5G Services: From the SESAME to the 5G ESSENCE Architectural Framework”;

•  “5G Edge Network Acceleration for a Stadium enabling Local Video Production and Distribution”;

• “On the Support of NG-RAN Functional Splits in the 5G ESSENCE Architecture”;

• “5G ESSENCE and 5G Italian MISE Trial: Synergies among the Use Cases”;

• “The Impact of 3D Beamforming MIMO on 5G Mobile Networks”;

•  “Crowdsourcing Mechanisms in the Privacy Flag Framework”;

• “Enhancing Critical Infrastructure Protection: The RESISTO Concept”;

• “Advancements in Cloud Computing to be considered in 5G Network Deployments”;

• “YAKSHA: Realising the Honeypot as a Service Concept”;

• “IoT in the Health Sector: Opportunities and Challenges coming from the VICINITY Context”.

Participation in several other research conferences and 5G-related events is as discussed below:

Athonet (ATH) has attended the 5G World Congress 2017^[7], in London, UK, on June 13-15, 2017, and will attend the 2018 one. ATH has presented network solutions crossing all 5G ESSENCE use cases, based on MEC.

ATH has also attended (with demos) the Mobile World Congress 2018^[8] (MWC 2018), in Barcelona, Spain, on February 25-28, 2018.

ATH has also presented a joint demo with ITL on use case 1. ITL has promoted a dedicated Press Release for this action^[9], on February 21, 2018.

The project has also attended (with demos) the Critical Communications World 2018^[10] (CCW 2018), that took place in Berlin, Germany, on May 15-17, 2018.

• ATH has attended the CCW 2018 in Berlin, presented software solutions for MCPTT (use case 2) and has won the International Critical Communications 2018 in the category “Outstanding Single-Site Critical Communications Installation”.

• EHU presented a demo of the MCPTT client used in the Use Case 2 (End-to-end slicing for mission critical applications) at the MCOP (Mission Critical Open Platform) (www.mcopenplatform.org) booth in the CCW 2018 (http://www.critical-communications-world.com/CCW) in Berlin.

ATH has joined the MulteFire Open Day, in Rome, Italy, on September 26, 2017. In this scope, ATH has attended and hosted with Enel the meeting in Rome^[11].

BAPCO has organised the BAPCO Show^[12] at the Ricoh Centre in Coventry, on March 20-21, 2018.

BAPCO has also organised an event (the BAPCO Autumn Event 2017^[13]) at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, on November 08-09, 2017, while its annual event (BAPCO Annual Event 2018^[14]) has been held in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, on June 12-14, 2018.