Category: Fiber Transceivers

Optical transceivers, Active Optic Cables, data center switches, and cable management in data centers.

Understanding Fiber Optic Based Light Source

Each piece of active electronics will have a variety of light sources used to transmit over the various types of fiber. The distance and bandwidth will vary with light source and quality of fiber. In most networks, fiber is used for uplink/backbone operations and connecting various buildings together on a campus. The speed and distance are a function of the core, modal bandwidth, grade of fiber and the light source, all discussed previously. Light sources of the fiber light source are offered in a variety of types. Basically there are two types of semiconductor light sources available for fiber optic communication – The LED sources and the laser sources.
Using single mode fiber for short distances can cause the receiver to be overwhelmed and an inline attenuator may be needed to introduce attenuation into the channel. With Gigabit to the desktop becoming commonplace, 10Gb/s backbones have also become more common. The SR interfaces are also becoming common in data center applications and even some desktop applications. As you can see, the higher quality fiber (or laser optimized fiber) provides for greater flexibility for a fiber plant installation. Although some variations ( 10GBase-LRM SFP+ and 10GBASE-LX4) support older grades of fiber to distances 220m or greater, the equipment is more costly. In many cases, it is less expensive to upgrade fiber than to purchase the more costly components that also carry increased maintenance costs over time.
Light sources of the fiber light source are offered in a variety of types. Basically there are two types of semiconductor light sources available for fiber optic communication – The LED sources and the laser sources.
In fiber-optics-based solution design, a bright light source such as a laser sends light through an optical fiber, called laser light source . Along the length of the fiber is an ultraviolet-light-treated region called a “fiber grating.” The grating deflects the light so that it exits perpendicularly to the length of the fiber as a long, expanding rectangle of light. This optical rectangle is then collimated by a cylindrical lens, such that the rectangle illuminates objects of interest at various distances from the source. The bright rectangle allows line scan cameras to sort products at higher speeds with improved accuracy.
The laser fiber-based light source combines all the ideal features necessary for accurate and efficient scanning: uniform, intense illumination over a rectangular region; a directional beam that avoids wasting unused light by only illuminating the rectangle; and a “cool” source that does not heat up the objects to be imaged. Currently employed light sources such as tungsten halogen lamps or arrays of light-emitting diodes lack at least one of these features.

The Importance of Reliable Date Cabling

It is hard to imagine a world without the internet as it is so important in the modern business environment. We cannot stress enough the importance of reliable networking cabling. Some recent studies vindicated our evangelical approach to data cabling:
Data cabling typically account for less than 10 percent of the total cost of the network infrastructure.
The life span of the typical cabling system is upward of 16 years. Cabling is likely the second most long-lived asset or have. The first is the shell of the building.
Nearly 70 percent of all network-related problems are due to poor cabling techniques and cable-component problems.
Note: If you have installed the proper category or grade of cable, the majority of cabling problems will usually be related to patch cables, connectors, and termination techniques. The permanent portion of the cable such as the part of the wall will not likely be a problem unless it was damaged during installation.
Of course, these were facts that we already knew from our own experience. We have spent countless hours troubleshooting cabling systems that were nonstandard, badly designed, poor documented, and shoddily installed. We have seen much money wasted on the installation of additional cabling and cabling infrastructure support that should have been part of the original installation. No mater how you will think about it, cabling is the foundation of the network and it must be reliable!
The best way to ensure that your networking needs are met is by checking that the person installing the data cabling is registered with a cable registrar such as ACRS or one of the other five registrars in Australia. You should also make sure that they have the appropriate experience and qualifications in their background, possibly determining this via recommendations or terminations.
Another good thing to do is make sure you get two or three quotes in order to create an accurate idea of pricing, as some installed quote ridiculously high-but others quote too low indicating that they are using inferior quality products. Because the installation has been quoted cheaply, does not mean it’s a good idea. Properly priced instances are more likely to have the quality installation products from good fibre optic cable manufacturers.
Besides, installation can often have a warranty, usually between five and twenty years. The better the products, the longer the warranty period as a rule.
Costs that result from poorly planned and poorly implemented cabling systems can be staggering. One company that had recently moved into a new office space used the existing cabling, which was supposed to be Cat 5 cables. Almost immediately, 100Mbps Ethernet network users reported intermittent problems. These problems include exceptionally slow access time when reading e-mail, saving documents, and using the sales database. Other users reported that applications running under Windows 98 and Windows NT were locking up, which often caused them to have to reboot their PC.
After many months of networking annoyances, the company finally had the cable runs tested. Many cables did not even meet the minimum requirements of a Category 5 installations, and other cabling runs were installed and terminated poorly.
Contrary to most peoples thinking, faulty cabling cause the type of intermittent problems that the aforementioned company experienced. In additional to being vulnerable to outside interference from eletric-motors, fluorescent lighting, elevators, cellular phones, copies, and microwave ovens, faulty cabling can cause intermittent problems because of other reasons such as substandard components (patch panel, connectors, and cable) and poor installation techniques. LSZH cables are needed some safety advocates such as the plenum space.
Robert Metcalfe helped coin the term drop-rate magnification. Drop-rate magnification describes the high degree of network problems caused by dropping a few packets. Medicare estimates that a 1 percent drop in Ethernet packets can correlate to an 80 percent drop in throughput. Modern network protocols that send multiple packets and expect only a single acknowledgement are especially susceptible to drop rate magnification, as a single dropped packet may cause an entire stream of packets to be retransmitted.

What Is 40G QSFP+ AOC and it’s application

40G AOC, is a type of active optical cable for 40GbE applications that is terminated with 40GBASE-QSFP+ on one end, while on the other end, in addition to QSFP+ connector, it can be terminated with SFP+ connector, LC, SC, FC, and ST connector etc. The 40G QSFP+ AOC is a parallel 40Gbps quad small form factor pluggable (QSFP+) active optical cable, which supplies higher port density and total system cost. The QSFP+ optical modules provide four full-duplex independent transmit and receive channels, each are able of 10Gbps operation 40Gbps aggregate bandwidth of at least 100m multimode fiber. Most DAC assemblies have one module on each end of the cable. But there is a special kind of DAC assembly which may have 3 or 4 modules on one end of the cable. For instance, Cisco QSFP-4X10G-AOC5M compatible QSFP+ to 4SFP+ breakout AOC from fiber-mart has a single QSFP+ module rated for 40-Gbps on one end and four SFP+ modules, each rated for 10-Gbps, on the other end.
Applications of 40G QSFP+ AOC
Active Optical Cable (AOC) is used for short-range multi-lane data communication and interconnect applications. It uses electrical-to-optical conversion on the cable ends to improve speed and distance performance of the cable without sacrificing compatibility with standard electrical interfaces. The 40G QSFP+ AOC is a high performance, low power consumption integrated cable for short-range multi-lane data communication and interconnect applications, supporting 40G Ethernet, fiber channel and PCIE. It is compliant with the QSFP MSA and IEEE P802.3ba 40GBASE-SR4. It integrates four data lanes in each direction with 40 Gb/s aggregate bandwidth. Each lane is capable of transmitting data at rates up to 10Gb/s with lengths ranging from one to 100 m. With its benefits, 40G QSFP+ AOC is widely used in many fields as well as promoting the traditional data center to step into optical interconnection.
40G QSFP+ AOC vs QSFP+ Optics
Cost: 40G AOCs cost lower than SR4 modules and do not need to use with extra fiber patch cables. For instance, HP 720205-B21 compatible QSFP+ to QSFP+ active optical cables are suitable for very short distances and offer a very cost-effective way to establish a 40-gigabit link between QSFP ports of HP switches within racks and across adjacent racks. Besides, when using 40G AOC, there are no cleanliness issues in optical connector and there is no need to do termination plug and test when troubleshooting, which can help user save more time and money.
Insertion Loss & Return Loss: Under the same case of transmission distance, the repeatability and interchangeability performances of SR4 module interface are not good as 40G AOC. What’s more, when different fiber optic patch cables plug into the module, it will have the different insertion loss and return loss. Even for the same module, this issue is existed. Of course, the related metrics such as the testing eye pattern will have no significant changes so long as the variation in and conformed to the scope. In contrast, an AOC with good performance is more stable and has better swing performance than SR4 modules in this situation.
fiber-mart’s AOC Solutions
fiber-mart’s AOCs achieve high data rates over long reaches which are the best solutions for high-performance computing and storage applications. We supply AOC products such as 10G SFP+ AOCs, 40G QSFP+ AOCs, QSFP+ to 4 SFP+ AOCs, QSFP+ to 8 x LC AOCs and 120G CXP AOCs etc. In addition, custom cables are also available in various lengths. Recently, fiber-mart has cut the price of its direct attach cable (DAC) products in order to offer a more cost-effective high speed transmission solution for the old and new customers.

CWDM Solutions Offered by fiber-mart.com

As broadband has unveiled a new world for subscriber, full of advanced capabilities and faster speeds. Your challenge is to meet their demands without compromising your budget. Because of its distance, speed and bandwidth potential, fiber optics has become the choice for many service providers. Fiber optic connections typically requires two strands of fiber – one for transmitting and one for receiving signals. But how to do if you need to add services or customers, but you’ve exhausted your fiber lines?
Thanks to CWDM, coarse wave division multiplexing (CWDM) is a method of combining multiple signals on laser beams at various wavelengths for transmission along fiber optic cables. The number of channels is fewer than in dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) but more than in standard WDM.
CWDM has many advantages over DWDM technology in terms of system costs, set-up, maintenance, and scalability. CWDM is a technology which multiplexes multiple optical signals on a single fiber optic stand by using different wavelengths, or colors, of laser light to carry the different signals.
Typical CWDM solutions provide 8 wavelengths capacity enabling the transport of 8 client interface over the same fiber. However, the relatively large separation between the CWDM wavelengths allows expansion of the CWDM network with an additional 44 wavelengths with 100GHz spacing utilizing DWDM technology, thus expanding the existing infrastructure capacity and utilizing the same equipment as part of the integrated solution.
A single outgoing and incoming wavelength of the existing CWDM infrastructure is used for 8 DWDM channels multiplexing into the original wavelength. DWDM Mux Demux and optical amplifier if needed.
The typical CWDM spectrum supports data transport rates of up to 4.25Gbps, CWDM occupies the following ITU channels: 1470nm, 1490nm, 1510nm, 1530nm, 1550nm, 1570nm, 1590nm, and 1610nm, each separated from the other by 20nm. PacketLight can insert into any of the of the 4 CWDM wavelengths (1530nm,1550nm,1570nm and 1590nm), a set of additional 8 wavelength of DWDM separated from each other by only 0.1nm. By doing so up to 4 times, the CWDM network capability can easily expand by up to 28 additional wavelengths.
With fiber-mart.com’s compact CWDM solutions, you can receive all of the above benefits and much more (such as integrated amplifiers, protection capabilities, and integration with 3rd party networking devices, etc.) in a cost effective 1 U unit, allowing you to expand as you grown, and utilize your financial as well as physical resources to the maximum. fiber-mart.com provides all the component involved in the process, such CWDM MUX DWMUX, CWDM OADM, even CWDM SFP transceivers.

Typical CWDM Optical Elements and Features

CWDM VS DWDM differ noticeably in the spacing between adjacent wavelengths. DWDM packs many channels into a small usable spectrum, spacing them 1 to 2 nm apart; DWDM systems support a high channel count, but also require expensive cooling equipment and independent lasers and modulators to ensure that adjacent channels do not interfere. CWDM systems, on the other hand, use 10 to 25 nm spacing, with 1300 or 850 nm lasers that drift less than 0.1 nm/c. This low drift eliminates the need for cooling equipment, which, in turn, reduces the total system cost. As a result, CWDM systems support less total bandwidth than DWDM systems, but with 8 to 16 channels, each operating between 155 Mbps and 3.125 Gbps to over 100 Gbps. Typical systems support eight wavelengths, data rates up to 2.5 Gbps per wavelength, and distances up to 50 km.
CWDM uses lasers with a wide channel CWDM wavelength spacing. In contrast, DWDM, which is widely used in long-haul networks and some metro core networks (particularly those with large diameters), uses lasers with much narrower wavelength spacing, typically 0.8 or 0.4 nm. The wide channel spacing of CWDM means a lower system cost can be achieved. This lower equipment cost is the result of a lower optical CWDM mux/demux cost (due to wider tolerance on the wavelength stability and bandwidth).
CWDM represents significant costs savings-from 25% to 50% at the component level over DWDM, both for equipment OEMs and service provides. CWDM products cost about 3500 dollars per wavelength. Traditional CWDM only scale to about eight wavelengths, but for metro access applications, this may be adaquare. Also, mux demux manufacturer china have found ways to combine CWDM with its regular DWDM blades that allow the systems to scale up to 20 wavelengths. CWDM system architecture can benefit the metro access market because it takes advantage of the inherent natural properties of the optical devices and eliminates the need to artificially control the component characteristics.
The typical CWDM optical elements are as follows:
CWDM Uncooled Coaxial Lasers: Distributed-feedback multiquantum well (DFB/MQW) lasers are often used in CWDM systems. These lasers typically come in eight wavelengths and feature a 13 nm bandwidth. Wavelength drift is typically only 5 nm under normal office conditions (say, with a 50℃ total temperature delta), making temperature compensation unnecessary. For additional cost savings, the lasers do not require external gratings or other filters to achieve CWDM operation. They are available with or without an integral isolator.
CWDM Transmitters/Receives: OC-48 CWDM transmitters typically use an uncooled DFB laser diode and are pigtailed devices in a standard 24-pin DIP package. Six to eight channels are supported (six channels: 1510 to 1610 nm; two additional channels are located at 1470 and at 1490 nm.) The OC-48 receiver typically uses an APD photodetector, has a built-in DC-DC converter, and employs a PLL for clock recovery. Transmission distances of up to 50 km are achievable with these modules.
CWDM Multiplexers/Demultiplexer: These come in 4 or 8 channel module, just 4 channel CWDM Multiplexer or 8 channel CWDM Multiplexer, typically use thin -film filters optimized for CWDM applications, with filtering bands matched t other CWDM wavelengths. Filters need to feature low insertion loss and high isolation between adjacent channels.
CWDM Optical ADD/Drop Modules (OADMS): These are available in various configurations with one, two, or four add and drop channels using the same thin-film filters as the CWDM mux and demux modules.

What is Ribbon Fiber Optic Cable

Ribbon fiber optic cable is a typical fiber optic cable. Unlike beam optical cable, ribbon fiber optic cable is arranged into a strip. Ribbon fiber optic cable is a convenient solution for space and weight problems. The cable ribbons are actually coated optical fibers placed side by side, encapsulated in Mylar tape, similar to a miniature version of wire ribbons used in computer wiring. A single ribbon many contain 4, 8 or 12 optical fibers. There ribbons can be stacked up to 22 high.
Because the ribbon contains only coated optical fibers, this type of cable takes up much less space than individually buffered optical fibers. As a result, ribbon cables are denser than any other cable design. They are ideal for applications where limited space is available, such as in an existing conduit that have very little room left for an additional cable.
Fiber optic ribbon cable comes in two basic arrangements: Loose tube ribbon cable, fiber ribbons are stacked on top of one another inside a loose-buffered tube. This type of arrangement can hold several hundred fibers in close quaters. The buffer, strength members, and cable jacket carry any strain while the fiber ribbons move freely inside the buffer tube. Jacket ribbon cable looks like a regular tight-buffered cable, but it is enlongated to contain a fiber ribbon. This type of cable typically features a small amount of strength member and a ripcord to tear through the jacket.
Ribbon cables is commonly used in urban construction of circle trank cable network, the large capacity and multi-core features facilitate the jumper box crossing task in the local optical area network. Ribbon cables is rarely used in inter-provincial long distance fiber optic trunk cable.
Ribbon fiber provides definite size and weight saving, which required the connector, strippers, cleavers, and fusion splicers to be tailored to the ribbon fiber. Below is the simple steps of ribbon fusion splicing:
Ribbon fusion splicer is also called mass fusion splicers, it can splice the entire cable ribbons at on time. Ribbon splicers looks similar to single fiber splicers and work in much the same way, except the ribbons are treated as one assembly, stripped, cleaved and spliced by special tools while held in a special holder. The holder is inserted in a special stripper that uses heat to make stripping easier. After stripping, the holder is placed in a special cleaver that will cleave all 12 fibers at once. Then the fixure with all the cleaved fibers is placed in the splicing machine. When the second ribbon is prepared, the unit is set for automated splicing.
fiber-mart, as one of the main fibre optic cable manufacturers provides a compact, efficient, and versatile solution to applications requiring maximum connectivity in a minimum amount of space. Our ribbon cable assemblies provide up to 72 fiber connections in a single point, reducing the physical space and labor requirement, while providing the same bandwidth capacity of a multi-fiber cable with individual fiber/connector terminations per fiber. The advantage of ultilizing ribbon fiber cables resides in the ability to achieve a much higher density in patch panel, cable routing/ducting, and device connection environments, without compromising the quality or quantity of the connection.