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}:

EASA - European Aviation Safety Agency.

ELT - Emergency Locator Transmitter. These fall in a family called Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon Station [EPIRBS] in Europe and operate on 406.0MHz [the older 121.5MHz is no longer monitored globally and is now limited for air and ground searches]. These are not to be confused with ULBs which are the "pingers" on equipment like the Aviation Black Boxes.

EMC - Electromagnetic Compatibility to EMI. You can design connections, for example, that are very resilient to interference as the cross-talk is managed to a minimum and due care is taken to layout and coupling.

EMI - Electromagnetic Interference. This is the disruption, disturbance or false execution of a given system by interference that has a coupling that is either Induction, Electrostatic or Conduction in nature.

EMRFCA - East Midlands Reserve Forces and Cadets Association.

ESA - European Space Agency.

ESD - Electrostatic Discharge. We have strict training and Quality Procedures for the right design of systems to prevent damage due to static electricity. All our labs have strong protection both in terms of floor, bench and equipment. Very high risk areas also have additional precautions.

ETSI - European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

EU - European Union of 28 Member states.

EUROCAE - European Organisation for Civil Aviation Equipment.

EW - Electronic Warfare.

FCC - Federal Communications Commission. US wire and radio safety and regulatory body.

FCO - The Foreign and Commonwealth Office. UK Central Government organisation for protecting and promoting all British Interests worldwide.

FDR - Flight Data Recorder. This is the aviation recorder that is for for crash analysis of an aircraft and typically records the various pilot and co-pilot instrumentation, controls and other data buses.

FEI - FEG 3D - Field Electron and Ion company of the US {traded as FEI}. They are specialist suppliers of highly analytic electron microscopes and ion beam sources for field emission research and electron microscopy. FEG 3D is a product.

FMED - Forces, Medical. See also PMED.

FOI - Freedom of Information. In context of such requests for public information or that which is deemed within the lawful act.

FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Array. A highly flexible reprogrammable Integrated Circuit that contains a sea of logic gates - they are very useful for implementing hardware-encoded algorithms or complex transforms of signal data. For Example, one video format to another.