By way of explanatory introduction, NTT Corporation has a total technology platform that straddles a multiplicity of technologies and tools. Very much in the style of the Japanese industrial conglomerate, a walk down any street in Tokyo means side-stepping manhole covers with NTT emblazoned into their cast iron die, primarily because a good proportion of the country’s telecom network runs on its cable backbone.
But cables are – as we know – fast becoming a legacy. NTT’s focus in recent years has seen it champion what it calls IOWN, or Innovative Optical and Wireless Network technology. Engineered around the concept of photonics (the ability to use light as a conductive computing conduit rather than silicon), IOWN is typified by its ability to work at low latency in low-power scenarios, often over large distances.
The company uses its NTT R&D Forum in Tokyo every year to centralize its messages and showcase its practical use cases with laboratory tours, keynote presentations and live demos of both prototyped and production-level use cases.
IOWN Defined
What is the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network?
NTT’s Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) is an initiative for future communications infrastructure designed to create a smarter world by using new and still-emerging technologies. IOWN is built around photonics technology for ultra-high capacity, ultra-low latency and ultra-low power consumption.
Today, most of our devices and technologies (phones, watches, gaming, sensors, PCs, servers, networks, etc.) use electronics to process and transmit information. IOWN uses optical technologies to change what used to be electronic connections into photonic connections, increasing transmission speeds and improving responsiveness.
The IOWN technology group involves devices, networks and information processing infrastructure built on optical and other technologies to deliver high-speed and high-capacity communications and computing resources. IOWN consists of three key areas of technology.
IOWN
- All Photonics Network (APN) is an application of optical technology. APNs promise to overcome existing network limitations by converting all signals into optical signals, creating networks with higher capacity, lower latency and reduced energy consumption.
- Digital Twin Computing (DTC) for advanced, real-time interaction between objects and people in cyberspace.
- The Cognitive Foundation (CF) deploys information technology and communications resources efficiently across key areas, including all of the above.
Tsunami Rafts to Next-Gen TV
The deployment surface area for NTT IOWN appears to be apparently unbounded; this is technology that could be used to reimagine computing across any industry vertical. A favorite with NTT R&D Forum attendees last year was an exhibit used to showcase a “connected canoe” (more of an ocean-going robotic raft perhaps), which is sent out to sea to monitor waveforms and help predict tsunamis. The low-power long-distance nature of IOWN makes this not quite the IoT, but something rather closer to the Internet of Photonics Things, even if that’s not a term that NTT wants to coin or be associated with.
Perhaps more down to earth is the company’s approach to remote video production. The goal here is to implement a wide-area network between multiple media studio locations that connects a large number of shooting sites and production bases. NTT says this will enable sophisticated media content production and minimize operating costs, equipment costs and environmental preparation time.
Content Creation Architecture
Creating what NTT calls a cost-effective new architecture for content creation, the company is aiming to empower the media broadcast industry to deliver on today’s content development challenges. Although the planet has switched to digital television services and evolved past the “transmission towers” of yesteryear in most areas, the way professional media services are being impacted has wider implications.
“The rapid advancement of media production technology makes it incredibly challenging to secure enough highly skilled and qualified media production operators to meet demand, especially in rural areas. This lack of skilled personnel, limited resources and high networking costs make distributing and developing quality content a daunting prospect. As a result, there is significant demand for new technologies and architectures that provide a more optimal profit structure to address these new market realities,” states NTT.
Open APNs, which primarily rely on photonics (using laser light rather than electricity) as the basis for data transmission, can provide flexible, resilient and highly performant connectivity to enable distributed applications, including high-quality video production.
Musashino Media Masters
“By utilizing IOWN technologies, an operator who manipulates the media essence for live broadcasting will be able to remotely control the media production resources, such as production switcher and editor, as if the operator and the media production resource were together at the same site. The flexible workflow enabled by this model will help secure highly skilled and qualified media production professionals who may be geographically distributed,” explained NTT’s media broadcast team, during demonstrations staged this year in Tokyo at the Musashino R&D Center.
IOWN technologies are offered to the broadcast industry in on-demand purchase models, in contrast to the conventional installation of dedicated lines. They operate with far less energy consumption than today’s networks, contributing to further reduction of operation costs.
Furthermore, IOWN technologies will enable the sharing and consolidation of top-end equipment, reducing both CapEx and OpEx. On the immediate road ahead, NTT is looking to lay down a greater number and diversity of Proof of Concept models to showcase how the practical implementation of these technologies will work. The best advice for now is, stay tuned and keep watching.
