The Federated Telecoms Hubs (FTH) continue to drive the innovation agenda, having recently awarded a total of £523K to six Proof of Concept (PoC) projects aimed at accelerating the translation of advanced connectivity research into real world solutions.
FTH’s mission is to turn cutting-edge research into technologies that deliver real impact for industry and society. The Proof of Concept 1 (PoC1) funding call supports researchers working at mid-stage commercialisation – typically Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) 4–6 – by helping bridge the gap between laboratory innovation and deployment. Projects are supported across multiple commercialisation pathways, including licensing, industry collaboration, and spin-out creation.
Together, these funded projects, which we are pleased to introduce below, address key challenges facing the telecoms sector, including network reliability and resilience, security, energy efficiency and sustainability, environmental impacts, and next-generation healthcare applications.
Optical Transceivers with Built-In Sensing for Real-Time Network Protection
The Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Centre at Bangor University, in collaboration with Comtek Network Systems, is developing a POC for game-changing PON (passive optical networks) optical transceivers with built-in sensing capabilities, enabling precise localisation and identification of fibre events without compromising PON transmission performances and economics. Two complementary prototypes targeting rural long-reach networks and high-density urban deployments demonstrate a scalable route to commercial adoption and accelerate Bangor University’s ongoing translation of sensing research into market-ready products.
Project team: University of Bangor: Xingwen Yi, Senior Lecture and Principal Investigator, Professor Jianming Tang, Director and Co-Principal Investigator, Grahame Guildford, Technology Exploitation Manager and Jasmine Parks, Industrial PhD student, with Comtek Network Systems: Askar Sheibani, Chief Operating Officer, Phil Bartlett, Sales Director and Stephen Pegrum, Product Director.
APP-O-RAN: Sustainable and Energy-Efficient Mobile Networks
The APP-O-RAN project directly addresses efficiency challenges through an Energy-Efficiency rApp that dynamically reduces radio access network (RAN) energy consumption using real-time network data and contextual inputs, without degrading quality of service. Early laboratory validation has demonstrated potential annual savings of approximately £50 million for an average UK mobile operator.
Project team: University of Glasgow: Professor Muhammad Imran, Head of the James Watt School of Engineering and project lead, supported by Senior Lecturers Dr Yusuf Sambo, Dr Oluwakayode Onireti and Dr Shuja Ansari.
Radar-Based Contactless Stethoscope for 6-G Enabled Healthcare
The proposed radar-based, contactless stethoscope project directly addresses a need for continuous, accurate, and non-invasive monitoring of cardiac health by enabling non-invasive heart sound monitoring without physical contact. Building on a validated PoC demonstrating excellent agreement with clinical benchmarks, this project will develop a healthcare-optimised radar prototype capable of comfortable, infection-free operation in hospitals, clinics, and home environments. The technology also establishes a pathway towards future contactless blood pressure measurement, significantly expanding its clinical and commercial relevance.
Project team: University of Glasgow: Professor Qammer H Abbasi, Principal Investigator, Dr Hasan Abbas, Co-Investigator and Professor Muhammad Imran.
All-Fibre Turbulence Emulator Prototype
The project responds to intensifying global interest in free-space optical communications (FSOC), driven by growing capacity demands in wireless point-to-point links and the rapid advancement of low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations over the past decade. In these systems, atmospheric turbulence is widely recognised as a critical barrier to reliable, high-capacity operation. This project aims to develop a fully fiberized, easy-to-use, and cost-effective device to emulate the effects of turbulence in free-space optical communications (FSOC), a critical challenge for next-generation point-to-point wireless and LEO telecommunications links.
Project team: University of Southampton: Professor Periklis Petropoulos, Deputy Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre, Dr Kyle Bottrill, Senior Research Fellow and Dr Debparna Majumder, Senior Research Fellow.
Securing Wi-Fi Connectivity Using Radio Frequency Fingerprints
This project addresses a fundamental and widely recognised vulnerability in current Wi-Fi security: the ease with which device identities can be spoofed. Existing Wi-Fi security mechanisms rely heavily on mutable identifiers such as MAC addresses, which can be trivially cloned, enabling unauthorised access to enterprise, public, and domestic networks. As Wi-Fi underpins critical digital infrastructure and an expanding ecosystem of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, this weakness presents a growing risk to data integrity, privacy, and operational resilience. This project will develop novel hardware impairments-based radio frequency fingerprint identification (RFFI), providing unique and secure device authentication for Wi-Fi.
Project team: University of Liverpool: Dr Junqing Zhang, Senior Lecturer and Principal Investigator, and Miss Yijia Guo, Researcher, with Queen’s University Belfast: Professor Simon Cotton, Director of the Centre for Wireless Innovation and Co-Investigator, Mr Norbert Sagnard, Business Development Manager and Dr Guolin Yin, Post Doctoral Research Associate.
Agentic AI-Based rApp Development and Orchestration for O-RAN
As Open RAN ecosystems mature and scale, the management and coordination of increasing numbers of xApps and rApps is emerging as a major operational and commercial challenge. While xApps for near-real-time RAN intelligent controller (RIC) functions are becoming increasingly mature and widely deployed, rApps operating in the non-real-time domain remain largely proprietary, siloed, and costly to engineer. This fragmentation risks undermining the O-RAN vision of openness, interoperability, and rapid innovation, creating a clear market need for scalable, automated frameworks at the rApp layer. This project addresses this gap by advancing an agentic artificial intelligence (AI)-based solution for rApp development and orchestration, leveraging large language models (LLMs) to enable intent-driven, adaptive control. Building on prior validation within Nvidia’s Omniverse environment, the project will further verify the solution within the JOINER infrastructure, increasing its maturity to TRL 6 and positioning it close to real-world deployment. This represents a critical step towards operationally viable, ecosystem-ready rApp intelligence.
Project team: University of Bristol: Yulei Wu, Associate Professor, responsible for project management, PoC development and commercialisation activities, Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, Director of Smart Internet Lab, responsible for leading and advising on the PoC and commercialisation process, and Research Associates Haiyuan Li and Hari Madhukumar.
About FTH
The Federated Telecoms Hubs (FTH) unite the excellence of 35 leading UK universities and research institutions to drive breakthrough telecoms innovation.
With significant funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and backed by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), FTH connects four leading hubs – CHEDDAR, HASC, JOINER, and TITAN.
By championing a “patents before papers” mindset, providing proof-of-concept funding, and shaping international standards, FTH is accelerating the translation of fundamental research into market-ready solutions.
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