As the standardization of 5G wireless networks progresses, the research community has started focusing on what 6G will be. Motivated by the need of ensuring high data-rates, while at the same time saving spectrum, a major technology that has been proposed for 6G is the integration of communication and sensing services in the same infrastructure. This enables wireless networks to perceive the surrounding environments, triggering new services and leading to a more efficient use of resources. The INTEGRATE project focuses on the theoretical, algorithmic, and architectural foundations of integrated communication and sensing networks, developing the first open access network-level simulator for joint communication and sensing. To this end, a new implementation of wireless transceiver is proposed, which leverages the use of reconfigurable holographic surfaces and allows the integration of communication and sensing with remarkable performance while at the same time reducing the energy consumption. Specifically, INTEGRATE will: 1) Develop reconfigurable holographic surfaces capable of supporting joint communication and sensing tasks and that can be integrated in wireless transceivers with minimal cost and energy requirements. 2) Characterize the fundamental performance limits of integrated communication and sensing networks, developing an algorithmic framework and protocol suite to approach these limits. 3) Build the first open access software simulation platform for joint communication and sensing networks.

Future networks will support several applications that require extending fiber-optic quality of experience to wireless links. This means connectivity at extremely high data rates with deterministic performance (guaranteed requirements in terms of reliability and time response). Virtual avatar presence, traffic control, autonomous driving, remote health monitoring, cyber physical systems for intelligent transportation, industrial automation are only a few examples of anticipated use cases. Owing to the large amount of available bandwidth, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute has identified terahertz (THz) as a key technology for future wireless networks. TeraWireless is the first EU training-through-research industrial doctoral network of doctoral candidates and senior supervisors fully committed to lay the theoretical, algorithmic, and architectural foundations for enabling THz systems at optical speed with deterministic performance. TeraWireless will 1) put forth the innovative ultra-MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technology for increasing the data rate and link reliability through spatial multiplexing and superdirective beamforming, and will pioneer the development of electromagnetic and communication models for evaluating its performance in low-scattering THz channels, where multipath propagation cannot be exploited, by integrating sensing, localization, communication capabilities; 2) leverage the emerging concept of semantic and goal-oriented communications by folding message semantics and goals of communication within communication layers; 3) develop innovative physics-based ML solutions for energy-efficient, robust, reliable, and explainable-by-design implementations; 4) make available to the research community the EU’s and world’s first open-access and open-source simulation environment - integrating ray tracing, link-level, and system-level features - for evaluating and optimizing THz large-scale deterministic networks at optical speed.