News: Optoelectronics
15 May 2025
SPRINTER project gains €6m from EU to develop new networks for ultra-connected smart factories
A new European project supported by the Photonics Partnership that aims to power the digital backbone of modern industry is laying the foundations for ultra-connected smart factories.
With a €6m investment from the European Commission, the SPRINTER project is developing optical and wireless technology that could replace slow, power-hungry industrial networks with fast, laser-driven communications systems.
The new industrial internet promises instant, wired and wireless connections between machines, rooms or even buildings, making it suitable for the fast, flexible demands of future smart factories.
Currently, factories and industrial sites rely on a mixture of copper cables, unreliable Wi-Fi, and switching systems.
For real-time, AI-driven future factories and warehouses that deploy automated robots, sensors, machine learning and 5G-controlled systems, existing setups are too slow and power-hungry. But, relying on its expertise in high-speed networks, the SPRINTER team is redesigning the ‘nervous system’ of modern industry, creating a dependable wireless communication network that continues to operate seamlessly in harsh, dynamic and extremely complicated environments.
“Industry 5.0 demands faster, smarter, and more robust networks,” says Efstathios Andrianopoulos, a researcher on the ICCS team that leads SPRINTER. “Our goal is to make Europe the world leader in industrial photonics — providing the tools to support the next generation of automation, robotics and intelligent systems.”
At the heart of the initiative are high-speed optical transceivers operating at a data rate of up to 200Gb/s. These are designed to be cheap, reliable and ultra-efficient, offering a considerable improvement in performance.
Dependability in harsh environments
The new SPRINTER hybrid (photonic/wireless) transceivers are being developed to switch from light to mmWave radio signals in order to offer more flexibility and backup, ensuring immunity against any interference such as dust, smoke, or a passing bird blocking the beams of light.
“Factories are full of moving parts, dust, and interference — a nightmare for traditional WiFi. That’s why we are developing hybrid ‘free-space optical and mmWave’ transceivers that combine laser and radio technologies to maintain wireless connections, even in the noisiest settings,” says Andrianopoulos. “We are building a unified network platform that supports time-sensitive networking systems where delays of even milliseconds can mean the difference between smooth automation and a factory shutdown.”
Four prototypes
As part of its mission to transform industrial connectivity, SPRINTER is developing four advanced prototypes tailored to the demands of next-generation smart factories. As well as the ultra-fast 200Gb/s optical transceivers for high-capacity core networks and hybrid free-space optical and mmWave transceivers, SPRINTER is developing wavelength-tunable 10Gb/s transceivers that can dynamically adapt to changing conditions in real-time.
To boost flexibility and efficiency, the project is also building a reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) optimized for space-division multiplexing, enabling intelligent data routing across complex networks to vastly increase the reliability and robustness of existing infrastructure.
Funded through the European Union’s Horizon Europe program, SPRINTER brings together leading research centers and industry experts from across the continent, including specialists in photonics, telecoms, and industrial automation.
Led by the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) in Athens, the SPRINTER project gathers 11 partners from across Europe and one from Israel, combining research institutes with industry players. Key contributors include Fraunhofer (Germany), imec (Belgium), LioniX International (Netherlands), and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), alongside global tech firms like Ericsson (Italy) and Mellanox Technologies (Israel). Agile SMEs such as PHIX, CUMUCORE, and FILL GmbH add specialized expertise in photonic packaging, 5G networking, and smart manufacturing. Swiss partner CSEM also supports the project, contributing expertise in microtechnology and system integration.
