ANTLab projects
This page lists the research grants and funded projects where ANTLab members are active.
RESTART
RESTART – Research and innovation on future Telecommunications systems and networks
RESTART is a national research and innovation program funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU under the NRRP (M4C2, Investment 1.3) and promoted by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR). Its goal is to drive the evolution of next-generation telecommunications systems and networks, strengthening Italy’s leadership in the sector.
The program addresses key areas of telecommunications science and technology, including high-capacity fixed networks, 5G/6G mobile systems, local and satellite networks, the Internet, and digital services for sectors such as industry, energy, health, media, finance, agriculture, security, and transportation. It also advances enabling technologies such as distributed cloud, artificial intelligence, programmable hardware, integrated optics, optoelectronics, and sensing.
RESTART involves 27 partners organized in a Hub-and-Spoke structure coordinated by the RESTART Foundation. Activities span research, technology transfer, innovation, start-up support, education, doctoral training, standardization, and open-source initiatives.
ANTLab plays a leading role in the program: Antonio Capone serves as Scientific Coordinator of RESTART, and several ANTLab members contribute to multiple projects and cross-project initiatives.
For more information:
RESTART foundation page
5G-CRESCA
The 5G-CRESCA project (5G Connected REplicable Services for Connected cAmpus), supported by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility program, marks a significant step forward in the development of innovative and connected digital services in the academic field through 5G technology.
The project is coordinated by Politecnico di Milano and involves the collaboration of Vodafone Italy, the University of Milan, MADE, the IRCCS Ca’ Granda Foundation, and the Violin Museum of Cremona. It includes the implementation of a hybrid private 5G mobile network within the university campuses of the Politecnico di Milano, the Policlinico di Milano, the MADE Competence Center, and the Violin Museum.
By leveraging high-speed, low-latency 5G networks and edge computing capabilities, the project aims to innovate learning and training methods, fostering collaboration with industry to create employment, economic growth, and social benefits. Starting from the academic sector, the project seeks to extend these advantages to the broader community, improving connectivity and data management security
The PI of the project is Antonio Capone and several other members of the ANTLab participate to the activities.
For more information:
Project page
CHORYS
CHORYS (Open and Programmable Accelerators for Data-Intensive Applications on the Cloud)
CHORYS is a EU HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions fundend project from the call Open Source for Cloud/Edge to support European Digital Autonomy (https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/HORIZON-CL4-2024-DIGITAL-EMERGING-01-21)
The project aims to leverage advances in open acceleration solutions to develop its own revolutionary open and programmable accelerators, recognizing the advantages of the European open computing architecture. The project will demonstrate the benefits of accelerators in terms of energy efficiency, cost, and performance.
CHORYS involves 8 partners: University of Copenaghen, TU Dresden, Menta Sas, Politenico di Milano, TU Darmstadt, Codasip GMBH, Cyso Bv and Computing Flows GMBH.
ANTLab plays a leading role in the program: Gianni Antichi is WP3 leader and co-Principal Investigator in conjuction with Prof. Davide Zoni. Several ANTLab members are actively contributing.
FLECON-6G
FLECON-6G (Flexible Open Architecture and AI-driven Enabling Technologies for a Novel 6G Connectivity Platform)
FLECON-6G is a EU Horizon JU Research and Innovation Actions funded project from the call System Architecture – Standardisation and Follow-up/PoCs (https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/HORIZON-JU-SNS-2024-STREAM-B-01-01)
The FLECON-6G project aims to develop an innovative blueprint for 6G architecture, characterised by its distributed, modular, open, and collaborative frameworks. This architecture is built on trustworthy principles and incorporates multi-layer Network Digital Twins (NDTs), which integrate seamlessly across various domains—from resource management to control and management planes, extending all the way to the business layer.
FLECON-6G envisions an “Intelligent 6G Network of Networks” that seamlessly integrates Native and Trustworthy AI. This vision empowers the automated and scalable orchestration of services and capabilities across diverse networks, subsystems, and technological domains, fostering collaboration among multiple stakeholders.
FLECON-6g involves 19 partners: Athena Research Center, Eurecom, CNIT, Tu Delft, UCLan Cyprus, Ebos Technologies, Iquadrat Informatica, Nextworks, Brainstorm Multimedia, E-Lighthouse Network Solutions, Realworld Eastern Europe, Airbus, Ericsson, Lenovo, Nvidia, Siemens, Orange Romania, OTE Group and Telefonica.
ANTlab participates under the CNIT umbrella with Gianni Antichi involved wihin the project.
CISCO
ANTlab has been awarded with a Cisco Research Grant that aims at establishing long term partnerships with universities to foster research and innovation.
The research activity focusses on routing in datacenter networks. Routing is the process of selecting the best path for packets to travel across a network. This is a core functionality in today’s datacenters, as they are built with massive path
redundancy. The rise of Artificial Intellingence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) has brought new challenges when designing routing schemes. The problem is that AI/ML workloads are:
(1) very sensitive to suboptimal path selection; (2) bursty and characterized by on/off patterns; (3) synchronous (many flows showing up at the same time).
All these characteristics make it really hard to build an optimal routing scheme. In this project, the insight is that we can leverage recent advances in network programmability (i.e., IPv6 segment routing) to architect a new routing solution that adapts well to AI/ML workloads and that is able to optimize for
performance (i.e., throughput and latency).
Vodafone group
ANTLab is involved in an industrial research contract with Vodafone Group within the framework of the Joint Research Platform established between Vodafone and Politecnico di Milano in 2018. This long-term collaboration brings together academic research excellence and industrial expertise to address key challenges in the design, management, and evolution of large-scale telecommunications networks.
The research activities focus on advanced network data analytics and on the development of data-driven methodologies to better understand and predict network behavior. By leveraging statistical modeling, machine learning, and optimization techniques, ANTLab works on extracting actionable insights from large volumes of operational network data. These insights are used to anticipate performance degradation, detect anomalies, and forecast congestion phenomena, enabling a more proactive and intelligent network management approach.
A significant part of the work is devoted to the analysis of critical scenarios and stress conditions, with the objective of assessing network robustness and defining effective mitigation strategies. The collaboration also supports strategic decision-making in network planning and expansion, providing quantitative tools for capacity planning, coverage optimization, and infrastructure densification. In parallel, dedicated research efforts address energy efficiency, developing models and control strategies aimed at optimizing energy consumption while maintaining high service quality, thus contributing to both operational efficiency and sustainability goals.
Huawei
ANTLab is engaged in an industrial research contract with Huawei within the Joint Research Platform established between Huawei and Politecnico di Milano. The collaboration focuses on innovative architectures and advanced solutions for next-generation mobile radio access networks.
Over the years, ANTLab’s research has addressed emerging paradigms such as Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB), exploring architectural solutions that efficiently combine access and backhauling functionalities in dense and heterogeneous deployments. Significant efforts have also been devoted to Smart Radio Environments, investigating the role of reconfigurable and programmable propagation environments in enhancing coverage, capacity, and energy efficiency.
Additional activities include the design of advanced radio resource management algorithms, wireless backhauling strategies, and spectrum management techniques aimed at improving network performance, flexibility, and scalability. The collaboration combines theoretical modeling and algorithmic development with system-level evaluation, contributing to the evolution of cutting-edge mobile network technologies.
Recently, Huawei has partnered with ANTLab to advance research in network monitoring for datacenter environments and hardware-accelerated network services. This collaboration brings together cutting-edge expertise to explore data-plane–friendly algorithms for efficient data acquisition, alongside the design and implementation of novel hardware primitives for next-generation network interface cards. By tightly integrating algorithmic innovation with hardware acceleration, the partnership aims to push the boundaries of performance, scalability, and real-time visibility in modern datacenter networks.
FiberCop
ANTLab and the team of Osservatori Digital Innovation is engaged in an industrial research contract with FiberCop within a larger collaboration with the DEIB – Politecnico di Milano. The collaboration focuses on business models and technical challenges associated to Edge Cloud solutions.
