D1.4 – BeGREEN Interim Project Report
Creators: name: Ghoraishi, Mir
name: Gutiérrez Terán, Jesús
name: Pryor, Simon
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: This document is the BeGREEN Interim Project Report. The report covers the first 12 months of the project, that is 2023. The project kicked off in January 2023, when the activities started slowly, by the end of 2023 the project works in WP2, WP3, and WP4 were well established, and one deliverable per WP was already submitted. The project use cases specification and demonstration planning kicked off mid-2023, and by the end of the year its report submitted as BeGREEN D5.1. Meanwhile the integration of the innovative solutions of the project started in the last three months of the year. The disseminations have been performing at various levels, e.g., publications, social media, events organisations, and presentations in events. The number of contributions (e.g., scientific publications) indicates that BeGREEN has been relatively successful so far in disseminating of its results, considering that most project results will be produced during the last months of its lifetime. The project has been pushing for standardisation contribution, and there is one contribution by far. 

BeGREEN activities have been organised in in-person plenary meetings (three plenaries a year), and work package telcos (biweekly for W2/3/4/5, and monthly for WP6). Partners have been interacting in these meetings to guarantee the fulfilment of the project requirements. 

This report document provides with a summary of the progress on the project’s technical work, which is organized in 4 work packages (WP): 

·       WP2 - System Architecture, Requirements and Specifications. BeGREEN primary architecture definition was worked out in WP2, and relevant use cases and reference scenarios were defined. This architecture has been evolved and updated by works done in WP3 and WP4. This evolution is being followed in WP2 to introduce the updated architecture in the WP2’s upcoming deliverable. In addition, relevant KPIs and KVIs are being identified in the framework of WP2. 

·       WP3 - PHY Layer Enhancements for Energy Optimisation. Distributed unit (DU) and central unit (CU) hardware acceleration, RU energy optimisation solutions, sensing and reconfigurable surface assisted resource allocation and energy efficiency, and relay-based energy efficiency improvements are analysed in this WP. The analysis and related state-of-the-art SotA of the related technologies are worked out and reported in BeGREEN D3.1. 

·       WP4 - AI-Assisted ORAN-based Edge and NFV Energy Optimisation. Main efforts in WP4 during the first 12 months of the project were on the design of BeGREEN’s Intelligence Plane, which is consisted of an AI-Engine, and energy score calculation function, service management and orchestration (SMO)/non-real-time (non-RT) RAN intelligent controller (RIC), Near-RT RIC, and control and monitoring interfaces. In addition, several AI/ML-assisted procedures to enhance energy efficiency of network functions virtualisation (NFV) functions were worked out. All results, in addition to a comprehensive review of the SotA are reported in the submitted BeGREEN D4.1.

·       WP5 - Solutions Implementation and Demonstration. WP5 provided a deliverable on BeGREEN PoCs and use cases. The project is working on five PoCs to demonstrate the innovations and solutions worked out during the project. BeGREEN D5.1 reports this as a result of T5.1 works, and the implementations and integrations are monitored in the current T5.2. 

The document then continues with updates on project disseminations, standard contributions, and liaison with external forums: 

·       Communications and disseminations: BeGREEN website and social media are active, and well on track to fulfil the requirements. On the dissemination, the project has had a good track record in publications, with 7 journal and 5 conference papers accepted so far. The activities on workshop organisations and participations, as well as other events such as expert panels have been taking off, 2 workshops and 1 expert panel are already organised, and project delegate have participated in some others. 

·       Standard contribution: The project has had a clear strategy to promote contributions to standardisations. A standardisation advisory committee was established, and discussions on the viable topics and ways to contribute discussed in monthly meetings. The project has already made one standard contribution, and further opportunities on contributing to standardisations are being discussed. It is worth mentioning that the project has also made a contribution in open-source data set publishing. 

·       Liaison with external projects and forums: BeGREEN has been actively participated in SNS activities. The outcome of these collaborations were organisation of 2 workshops and participation in a couple of others, organisation of an expert panel and participation in another one, participation in a white paper as chapter editor, and actively participating in all activities arranged by SNS technical and steering boards. The project has also made interactions with other forums such as NGMN and KDT JU. 

The report also provides updates on the project management and administration routines, cost and resources during the first year of the project, and status of deliverables and milestones.