The overall aim of CODECO is to contribute to a smoother and more flexible support of services across the Edge-Cloud continuum via the creation of a novel, cognitive Edge-Cloud management framework. CODECO will implement software toolkits suitable for a smarter management of highly distributed environments based on heterogeneous networks and integrating mobile, resource-constrained devices. The CODECO components shall extend management and orchestration of Edge-Cloud services with cognitive cross-layer adaptability and with features that allow for intelligent decisions about computational offloading and network adaptation, while taking into consideration application requirements, networking requirements, data security and sensitivity, as well as other context specific aspects related with the data flow, which may emerge.

CODECO aims at providing support for the next generation of smart services, focusing on dense deployments in B5G/6G services. For this, CODECO considers multiple use-cases across different vertical domains (Smart Cities, Manufacturing, Energy and Smart Facilities), involving mobile, far Edge devices and addressing the IoT-Edge-Cloud orchestration based on a cross-layer approach that envisions data, compute, and network adaptation.

The key research contributions from the project are:

• Automated configuration and cognitive Edge-Cloud management considering a cross-layer behaviour (application to the network), data and meta-data management, and policy enforcement. .
• Privacy preserving decentralised learning and context-awareness, addressed in a cross-layer manner, and focusing on beyond federated learning approaches that may better suit the orchestration of data workflow-computation-networking.
• Dynamic scheduling and workload migration. Addresses challenges derived from the higher degree of automation due to container and workload mobility between nodes in a single cluster and across different clusters.
• Joint orchestration of computational and networking resources. On the one hand, the networking infrastructure needs to become more flexible, intent and context-driven, i.e., the network should be seen and worked upon as being a single system. On the other hand, joint computational and networking paradigms, that integrate, by design, aspects such as security/trustworthiness, mobility support, decentralised and flexible naming spaces are key to build a smart, decentralized Edge ecosystem.

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The CODECO framework is established via the development of several assets: