The DISCRETION proposal was submitted to the 2020 call for proposals of the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP).
The DISCRETION proposal, from the consortium including Adyta, was ranked first in the topic “Cyber situational awareness and defence capabilities, defence networks and technologies for secure communication and information sharing” of the EDIDP 2020 call for proposals (EDIDP-CSAMN-2020).
The project will be developed over 42 months, with a total budget of €6,719,699.75 (six million, seven hundred nineteen thousand, six hundred ninety-nine euros and seventy-five cents).
The work will be carried out by a team including DEIMOS Engenharia (consortium leader), Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto Superior Técnico, Altice Labs (all Portuguese entities), Telefonica Investigación y Desarrollo S.A.U., Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (both from Spain), Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (Austria), and Nextworks (Italy).
The DISCRETION project aims to integrate and combine software-defined networking (SDN) and quantum key distribution (QKD) technologies. Alongside legacy optical networks, this will enable the construction of a highly secure, scalable, and resilient network control architecture for advanced tactical operations. Compared to the traditional approach—where network configuration and management interfaces are typically proprietary and tied to a specific vendor—SDN represents a revolution that allows for greater network evolution, opening it to potentially disruptive technologies such as quantum key distribution and quantum technologies in general.
This technology will strengthen European defence autonomy in secure communications and will also enable European armed forces to leverage the radio frequency spectrum for military activities.
Carlos Carvalho, CEO da Adyta, stated “This is a decisive project for our company, especially since quantum technologies will be key to the future of secure communications, and this area—secure communications—is one of our main focuses. We are proud that Adyta is involved in this project, as part of a consortium including such prominent national and international entities.”.
About EDIDP
The European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) is an EU industrial programme that supports the competitiveness and innovation capacity of the European defence industry.
With a financial envelope of €500 million for 2019-2020, EDIDP was the first EU support programme specifically aimed at capability development and co-financing the joint development of defence products and technologies (both new and modernization of existing systems). EDIDP was one of the two precursor programmes of the European Defence Fund.
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