Globalisation, coupled with the accessibility of the Internet in the modern world, can result in things meaning very different things to different people. Common terms can be misused too; we have seen some very interesting interpretations of meanings in our various lifetimes! We have decided to put a lexicon on the website so we can keep the pages tight to the usually defined and abbreviated form. Apologies if that makes them a little awkward to read. Rather than a straight glossary, herein is a lexicon to aid better the background as often a little more context is needed in this highly specialist field and easily stated, yet difficult to actually do set of technologies and problems.

This is not going to be exhaustive, but will list many of the acronyms and areas where an explanation is best served. We will assume most of the common Telecommunications and Military Signals terms are standard, for the avoidance of doubt we will always use the UK meaning. If we choose to alter that to a NATO or other jurisdiction then it will be listed below. Feel free to Contact Us to ask us to update this page with something we haven't yet put on here.

The common Electronic Warfare acronyms are excluded.

The following links are the various pages in alphabetic order for our site's use of various abbreviations and our intended meaning, {use the links to relevant pages}:

Accu ~ E Standards - Analytical Reference Standards {Chemicals} from AccuStandard Inc.

ADS - Aerospace, Defence, Security and Space Trade Association.

ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. ANSI T1.413-1998 iss 2. ITU G.992.* This is a 1.5Mb/s to 24Mb/s Communications Link on unscreened twisted pairs [UTP] - typically the last two miles of copper cable from a telephone exchange.

AEO - Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US. The organisation has the specialist programmes of AEO {Adaptive Execution Office}, DSO {Defence Sciences Office}, I2O {Information Innovation Office}, MTO {Microsystems Technology Office}, STO {Strategic Technology Office}, TTO {Tactical Technology Office} and BTO {Biological Technologies Office}.

AERO - Royal Aeronautical Society.

AES - Advanced Encryption Standard. This is the Symmetric Encryption algorithm based on the work of the two Belgian mathematicians that invented the Rijndael cipher. See ISO/IEC 18033-3.

AFF - Army Families Federation.

AMS Neve -This is the audio company created by the merger of Advanced Music Systems and Neve Electronics. It is ultimately owned by the SIEMENS group. Many of the large film and top recording studios choose the analogue and digital audio solutions of AMS Neve due largely to the excellence in engineering and hence performance. 

ANSI - American National Standards Institute.

AOF - Acquisition Operating Framework of the UK Ministry of Defence. This is the procurement and project management standard operating clauses and procedures primarily for DE&S and its partners. This has been renamed ASG.

ASG - Acquisition System Guidance Framework of the UK Ministry of Defence. This is the procurement and project management standard operating clauses and procedures primarilly for DE&S and its partners. This was previously called AOF.

ASTM - American Society of the International Association for Testing and Materials. This predates many of the other standards organisations and its heritage goes back to 1898.

ASTOS - Association of Specialist Technical Organisations for Space.

ATO - Ammunition Technical Officer.

A/V - Audio Visual. Standard Audio and Video. Often [sic:mis-] used to describe both analogue and digital audio and video circuits. Technically speaking A/V is analogue unless otherwise clarified in our meaning.

BCS - British Computing Society. This is now known as the Chartered Institute for IT.

BGA - Ball Grid Array. This is a packaging philosophy for Integrated Circuits and Monolithic Devices that has a pad grid on the underside. This is initially supplied with small beads of solder on each pad allowing the surface mounting to the PCB to have a much higher density - but also better RF and parasitic inductance effects. Care must be designed for thermal matching, tin whisker, and RoHS implications for high gravity and thermal shock environments and solderability. Plus post-inspection needs to be IEEE 1149.1 JTAG and / or X-Ray.

BIR - British Institute for Radiology.

BSI - British Standards Institute.

BTO - Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US. The organisation has the specialist programmes of AEO {Adaptive Execution Office}, DSO {Defence Sciences Office}, I2O {Information Innovation Office}, MTO {Microsystems Technology Office}, STO {Strategic Technology Office}, TTO {Tactical Technology Office} and BTO {Biological Technologies Office}.