UK registered organisations can apply for a share of £15 million, including VAT, to develop near term, testable solutions that advance the UK’s Secure & Resilient and Sustainable Network Grand Challenges through deployable prototypes on UK testbeds.
Your project should address one of the following themes:
Theme 1: AI‑Enabled Network Resilience and Automation. This theme focuses on AI driven tools that improve the reliability of UK networks predicting faults, detecting anomalies, optimising performance, and orchestrating rapid recovery. Approaches may incorporate intent based automation, semantic communications, digital twins, distributed edge AI compute, or integrated sensing and communications to enhance network awareness. Supporting technologies could include RF processors, optical switching or chiplet base accelerators for real time decision making. Innovations that improve spectrum security by detecting and reducing harmful interference – such as spoofing and jamming would also be in scope.
Theme 2: Seamless Integration of Terrestrial and Non‑Terrestrial Networks (NTN). This theme seeks innovations that deliver smooth, consistent connectivity across terrestrial, satellite and aerial networks. Opportunities include terrestrial and non-terrestrial network convergence, advanced handover mechanisms, unified management or control layers, and multi‑domain resource orchestration. Relevant enabling technologies include steerable and metamaterial antennas, free space optical links, optical or photonic transceivers, inter‑satellite link technologies, and software defined, intent based network control.
Theme 1: Reducing Energy Use in Critical Network Components. This theme targets substantial reductions in the energy consumption of base stations, transport networks, and edge infrastructure. Solutions may include high efficiency compound semiconductor devices, such as Gallium Nitride (GaN), Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), Indium Phosphide (InP), photonic switching, to reduce optical losses, advanced packaging and thermal management. Approaches that cut per‑bit energy use and reduce active‑component duty cycles are encouraged.
Theme 2: Improving Spectrum Efficiency and Fair Access. This theme focuses on technologies that increase spectral efficiency and improve access to finite spectrum resources. Potential approaches include dynamic sharing, interference resilient radios, advanced modulation or coding, RF processing innovations, and cell free or distributed Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) architectures. Supporting technologies may include adaptive antennas, metamaterials, novel waveform design, or hybrid (RF and optical) systems that relieve congestion and enhance spectral reuse.
Your project must: start by 1 September 2026, end by 31 August 2027, last between 3 and 12 months, have total costs of between £200,000 and £2 million, inclusive of VAT. To lead a project, you must be a UK registered registered organisation of any size, carry out your project work in the UK and intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK, work alone or with the subcontracted skills and expertise of others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations, or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups). You must carry out your project work in the UK and intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK.
The UK team has a strong track record in securing some of the most competitive national and European grants on behalf of its clients, with a full understanding of how a project should be presented to stand the highest chance of success. Each year in the UK alone, we are responsible for the submission of more than 100 funding applications across all sectors and priority areas. Based on this extensive experience, through careful project selection and using key insight into how a project should be best positioned, we consistently achieve success rates that are more than 5 times the typical success rates for UK national schemes and EU programmes.
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