IOWN Technology Glossary of Terms

The APN is the communications infrastructure of the future. It is a high-quality all-optical network that responds to increasingly diverse and complex needs by making use of photonics-based technologies in all areas from network to terminal. This approach enables a variety of benefits including power saving, larger capacity networks and ultra-low delay on the order of a 100X improvement over traditional networks.

Digital twins are virtual, digital replicas of actual or potential physical devices, processes, people, places and systems that can be used to run simulations. IOWN’s use of digital twin computing will be a significant advancement enabling previously impossible new, large-scale, high-precision real world reproductions by performing numerous operations to freely combine various digital twins.

For IOWN, interconnectivity is the linking of optical networks so that users of one all-photonics network can communicate with users of another all-photonics network.

A collection of documents that define the specification and underlying implementation details.

A simulation is an approximate imitation of the operation of a process or system representing its operation over time.

Replacing electronic-based networks for networks that transmit data using light waves lowers power consumption a 100X while increasing transmission rates by 125X.

Reference design refers to a technical blueprint of a system that is intended for others to copy. It contains the essential elements of the system; however, third parties may enhance or modify the design as required. IOWN will create reference designs around its next generation communications infrastructure.

Creating a Smarter World is the chief goal of IOWN Global Forum. It seeks to achieve this goal by using optical networks and distributed computing to make technology so pervasive in daily life that people don’t even realize they are using and benefiting from it.

A technical specification (tech spec) is a detailed description of technical requirements, usually with specific acceptance criteria, stated in terms suitable to form the basis for the actual design development and production processes.  It explains what a product or project will do and how to achieve these goals.

Ultra-wideband (also known as UWB) is a wireless technology for transmitting large amounts of digital data over a wide spectrum of frequency bands with very low power for a short distance.

UI stands for “user interface.” The user interface is the graphical layout of an application. It consists of the buttons users click on, the text they read, the images, sliders, text entry fields, and all the rest of the items the user interacts with. “UX” stands for “user experience.” User experience is determined by how easy or difficult it is to interact with the user interface element. IOWN aims for creating a natural and seamless UI and UX powered by a next generation communications infrastructure.

A working group is a group of experts, in this case IOWN Global Forum members, working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. IOWN Global Forum’s working groups will focus on developing specifications, best practices and use cases for designing and deploying the next generation communications infrastructure.