Things You Need to Know About ADSS Fiber Cables

When it comes to OSP (outside plant) deployment, many types of fiber optic cables are used for different OSP applications. ADSS (all-dielectric self-supporting) cable is the type that is strong enough to support itself between structures without using conductive metal elements. It is often installed along aerial transmission lines to be a communication medium for electrical utility companies. Both single-mode and multimode fibers can be arranged in ADSS cables. And when using single-mode fibers, the cable can carry the maximum of 144 fibers. But do you know the basic structures of ADSS cable? What are the advantages of using ADSS cable? And how can you prevent ADSS cable from damage? This article will give you all the answers.

Structures of ADSS Cable

There are generally two kinds of structures for ADSS cable. One is called as central tube structure. From the following picture, the fiber of a certain length is placed in a PBT loose tube filled with water-blocking material. Then it is wrapped with aramid yarn according to the desired tensile strength and extruded with PE or AT sheath. This structure has a smaller diameter and lighter weight. But the fiber length is limited.

The other type of structure is called as stranded structure. The following picture shows that the fiber loose tubes are surrounding around a central strength member (usually as FRP material). And the rest parts are similar to the central tube structure. This type is able to obtain longer fiber length. Although the diameter and weight is relatively big, it is better to be deployed for large span applications.

Benefits of ADSS Cable

There are many advantages of using ADSS cable. The overall weight and diameter of the cable are small which is a relief to the towers and poles. And its total transmission range is large enough to reach up to 1200 meters. Using the polyethylene sheath will also protect the cable from corrosive effect. ADSS cable’s non-metallic structure makes it possible to be anti-lightning. And the aramid yarn helps the cable to have good tensile performance and temperature performance under extreme weathers. The maximum lifespan of ADSS fiber cables can even reach up to thirty years.

Precautions for ADSS Cable Damage

• Point 1, since many cables are running through mountainous areas, it is inevitable that the cables will be scratched or bent when come across trees or rocks. Especially for the cable sheath damage, it will greatly harm the service life of cable because the surface can be corroded once exposed to the dust and salty environment. Thus, the cable installation should be under careful examination and monitoring.
• Point 2, due to the partial force during the line construction, common accidents like broken fiber and high loss point can be occurred. Lots of people think it is the problem of cable quality, but actually it is because of the wrong construction process. Therefore, taking control of the constant tension at a uniform speed during installation is very important.
• Point 3, another common damage is the broken fiber at strain towers. This is because of the wrong operation or partial force on fibers. During the construction, installers must pay attention to the proper angle and pulling direction of fibers to avoid such accidents.

Conclusion

ADSS fiber cable is ideal for installation in distribution as well as transmission environments. It does not need support or messenger wire, a single pass is sufficient for installation which make it a cost-effective and simple way of setting up fiber optic networks. With careful installation, this type of fiber optic cable can bring much convenience for the proper application.

source:http://www.fiber-optical-networking.com/things-need-know-adss-fiber-cables.html

No More Worries for Cable Bending

Under general conditions, fiber patch cables are not allowed to be bent beyond bend radius in case of light leaking. However, when installing cables at high-density environments, cable bending is hard to avoid. In order to solve the problem, bend insensitive fiber patch cable is designed to cause much lower optical power loss under bend conditions. In this way, cable bending won’t be an obstacle for your cable installation. This post will take you to explore the world of bend insensitive fiber patch cables.

Introduction to Bend Radius

Bend radius is the minimum radius one can bend a pipe, tube, sheet, cable or hose without kinking it, damaging it, or shortening its life. The smaller the bend radius, the greater is the material flexibility. When you install the cables, keep in mind do not exceed the cable bend radius. Usually, if no specific recommendations are available from the cable manufacturer, the cable bend radius should be smaller than 20 times the cable outside diameter when pulling the cable and 10 times the outside diameter when lashed in place. For example, while pulling a 2mm diameter cable allows for a 40mm sweep. When lashed in place make sure it’s a 20mm sweep. For most of today’s fiber patch cables, the bend radius is 30 mm.

Multimode Bend Insensitive Fiber Patch Cable

Our multimode bend insensitive fiber patch cables have a minimum bend radius of 7.5mm, which compares very favorably to the 30mm bend radius traditionally specified. To achieve this, an optical “trench” is added to the cladding area outside of the fiber core.  This trench retains more of the light that would have escaped the core of a traditional multimode fiber. Requirements for a tighter bend radius have been developed based primarily on factors in the fiber to the home (FTTH) market. However, the benefits for premise markets have rapidly become apparent, particularly in data centers where more and more fibers are being installed in smaller areas. The expectation is that this new feature can enable deployment of multimode fibers in higher densities.

Single-mode Bend Insensitive Fiber Patch Cable

Single-mode bend insensitive fiber patch cables have been commercially available for several years. ITU recommendation G.657 specifies two classes of single-mode bend insensitive fiber patch cables: G.657 A and G.657 B. Each category (A and B) is then divided into two sub-categories: G.

657.A1, G.657.A2 and G.657.B1, G.657.B2. The minimum bend radius of G.657.A1 fibers is 10 mm, of the G.657.A2 and G.657.B1 fibers is 7.5 mm and of the G.657.B2 fibers is 5 mm. Among, ITU-T G.657.A1 and ITU-T G.657.A2 fibers are fully compliant with ITU-T G.652.D fibers. Compared with minimum bend radius of the standard single-mode G652 fibers, which is usually 30 mm, G.657 single-mode bend insensitive fiber patch cables are much more flexible thus can be confidently installed with a variety of installation methods and in the increasingly high-density application spaces of today’s data center.

Conclusion

If you want to be bent-free for cable installation, bend insensitive fiber optic cable is a perfect solution. Its solid trench helps reduce the cable bending optical loss. And this type of cable is as qualified and functional as the standard patch cables. Both multimode and single-mode fibers can be made bend-insensitive. A wide range of bend insensitive patch cord selections is waiting for you to choose.

Source:http://www.fiber-patch-cords.com/blog/a/132/No-More-Worries-for-Cable-Bending

Applications for Outside Plant Fiber Optic Cables

Inside plant refers to the cabling running inside a building. Similarly, outside plant is the cabling running outdoors. Outside plant cables are thicker because of more durable insulation jackets. As for fiber optic communication, there are many types of outside plant fiber optic cables. Some have extra protections to prevent corrosion and other elemental interference. Outside plant fiber optics are widely used in telephone networks, CATV, metropolitan networks, utilities and so on. If you want to choose the right outside plant fiber optic cable, its applicable environment is an important factor for consideration. This post will introduce some common outside plant fiber optic cables and typical outdoor application environments.

Several Types of Outside Plant Fiber Optic Cables

Outdoor Breakout Cable

Outdoor breakout cable is perfect for rugged applications and installations that require increased performance. It is usually made of several bundled simplex cables wrapped in a common cable jacket. The fungus, water and UV protections and temperature durability are beneficial to its outside applications. Its design of individual fiber reinforcement enables the quick termination to connectors and omits the use of patch panels or boxes. With much less termination work, outdoor breakout cable is more cost-effective when small fiber counts and short distances are required.

Outdoor Loose Tube Cable

Outdoor loose tube cable has the gel-filled design protecting the cable from moisture environment. The gel within the loose-tube construction stops the penetration of water and keeps it away from the fiber. Also, it keeps water from freezing near the fiber at low temperatures which reduces the chance of stress fractures. Fibers are bundled inside a small plastic tube that can protect fibers from outside stresses. Outdoor loose tube cable is often used in conduits, strung overhead or buried directly into the ground.

Outdoor Ribbon Cable

Outdoor ribbon cable has high fiber counts and small cable diameter. It contains the most fibers in the smallest cable. These fibers are laid out in rows as ribbons, and ribbons are laid on top of each other. Likewise, it also has gel-filled protection to block outside water. Ribbon cable makes installation much faster and easier since mass fusion splicers can join a ribbon at once.

Outdoor Armored Cable

Outdoor armored cable is a direct buried type that prevents itself from animal bite. The metal armoring between two jackets effectively prohibits rodent penetration. Outdoor armored cable can be divided into light armored and heavy armored types. The former has the protective plastic jacket with the same durability and longevity of a stainless steel cable with a lighter weight. The latter is wrapped in a wire circle to be applied for underwater regions that near shores and shoals.

Outside Cable Plant Applications

Outside cable plant deployment can be implemented in many environments. Above-ground, underground, buried and underwater are the typical applications.

Above-ground Cable Plant

Above-ground cable plant can be exposed to extreme temperatures, and to humidity that varies with the seasons and with daily temperature changes. Cables under such circumstances should be durable to adapt to extreme weathers and water penetration.

Underground Cable Plant

Underground cable plant usually applies cables in underground structures including the utility holes, controlled environmental vaults, ducts and so on. The condition in utility holes and ducts sometimes can be corrosive because of man-made chemicals. Cables with corrosion-proof materials are perfect for this environment.

Buried Cable Plant

Buried cable plant applies cables directly into the soil. Cables can also be exposed to the same corrosive environment as underground plant. But animal bite is an additional problem. Cables for this application should be very tough to endure both chemical corrosion and animal attack.

Underwater Cable Plant

Underwater cable plant are located beneath the surface of water. The water can range from relatively pure to brackish, or to badly contaminated with industrial effluent. Cables for underwater plant are extremely rugged, with fibers in the middle of the cable inside stainless steel tubes and the outside coated with many layers of steel strength members and conductors for powering repeaters.

Conclusion

Unlike indoor cables, outside plant fiber optic cables must be wrapped in different layers to withstand the severe installation conditions. Choosing the right kind of outdoor cable can save you a great deal for long-term maintenance. And your project application is an important aspect that will affect the selection of fiber optic cables.

Source:http://www.fiber-optical-networking.com/applications-outside-plant-fiber-optic-cables.html

Choose the Right Patch Cable for Your Transceiver Module

To a large extent, a fluent data transmission relies on the seamless transition between patch cables and fiber optic transceivers. As high bandwidth gradually dominates the market, patch cables and transceivers become much more essential to data transmission, especially for data transmission between the switches and equipment. But when you try to find the right patch cable for your transceiver, you may feel dazzling about the great variety of products. Don’t worry, this article will help you find the quickest way to choose the suitable product. But first, let’s have a look at the basic knowledge about patch cables and transceiver modules.

Overview of Patch Cables and Transceiver Modules

A patch cable or patch cord is an electrical or optical cable used to connect one electronic or optical device to another for signal routing. It is composed of an electrical or optic cable terminated with connectors on the ends. Optical patch cables are now widely used in data centers for data transmission. They have different fiber connectors including LC, SC, ST, FC, MTRJ, E2000, MU, MPO/MTP, etc. As for fiber types, there are also single-mode patch cables and multimode patch cables. Single-mode patch cables can further be classified into OS1 and OS2. While the multimode can be further divided into OM1, OM2, OM3 and OM4.

Transceiver is a self-contained component that can both transmit and receive. It is often inserted in devices such as switches, routers or network interface cards which provide one or more transceiver module slot. Many transceivers types, such as SFP, X2, XENPAK, XFP, SFP+, QSFP+, CFP, etc. are used for various applications. The transceiver accepts digital signals from the Ethernet device and converts them to optical signals for transmission over the fiber.

Several Aspects to Consider

Transmission Media

Two kinds of transmission media can be found in the network. They are optic fiber cable and copper cable. Therefore, transceivers also have two types based on transmission media — copper based transceivers and fiber optic based transceivers. Copper based transceivers like 100BASE-T SFP, 1000BASE-T SFP are the commonly used types. They have a RJ45 interface to connect with the copper cables. Generally, cat 5, cat 6 and cat 7 cables attached with RJ45 connectors are typically linked to the copper based transceivers.

Compared with copper based transceivers, fiber optic transceivers support higher data rates for over 100 Gbps. The supported fiber patch cables are more complicated for selection. Usually single-mode and multimode fiber patch cables are used. But according to different transmission rates and transmission distance, further choices should be made.

Transmission Rate and Distance

It is known that data rate decreases as the transmission distance increases in fiber optic cables. Multimode fiber optic cables are often used for short distances due to the high cost of single-mode optical cables. But single-mode patch cables have better performance for different data rates in both long and short distances. Thus, if your transceiver supports high data rate over long distance, single-mode should be a better choice, and vice versa.

Transceiver Interface

Interfaces are also important to the selection of patch cables that match with transceivers. Optical transceivers usually use one port for transmitting and one port for receiving. Cables with duplex SC or LC connectors are typically employed to connect with this type of fiber optic transceivers. However, for BiDi transceivers only one port is used for both transmitting and receiving. Thus, simplex patch cables are used with BiDi transceivers.

Other high data rate transceivers like 40G/100GBASE QSFP+ often use MTP/MPO interfaces. They should be connected to the network with multi-fiber patch cords attached with MTP/MPO connectors. If these ports are used for 40 G to 10 G or 100 G to 10 G connections, fanout patch cables should be used.

Conclusion

Knowing the transmission media, transmission data rate and distance, transceiver interfaces can give you a general direction of which type of patch cables should be chosen. Only matched patch cables and transceiver modules can provide better performance.

Source:http://www.fiber-optical-networking.com/choose-right-patch-cable-transceiver-module.html

Applications of Special-Purpose Fiber Patch Cables

Fiber patch cable is an indispensable part for fiber optic communication. Signals are depending on this device to finish data transmission. Standard fiber patch cables are the most common patch cables in the market. However, there are some specific applications that need special treatment. Therefore, a range of special-purpose fiber patch cables have emerged as required. This article will recommend several unique but useful fiber patch cables. Maybe one of them will suit your needs.

HD TAB Fiber Patch Cable

As the name suggests, HD TAB fiber patch cable has a special push-pull tab which provides great convenience for high-density installations. Technicians can have easier finger access to installing or releasing the cables without using any additional tools. In today’s market, HD TAB fiber patch cables are usually terminated with LC or MTP/MPO connectors. If you are seeking for a high-density and space-saving solution, HD TAB fiber patch cable is highly recommended.

Uniboot LC Fiber Patch Cable

The uniboot LC fiber patch cable bundles two fibers in a single patch cord which saves much space for cabling. The changing of its LC uniboot connector polarity is easy ,which skips the using of tools. Uniboot LC fiber patch cable is available in different fiber types of single-mode, OM3 and OM4. The purpose of this cable is to deliver maximum connectivity performance in a minimal footprint. If you want to achieve an easier cable management, this is definitely a good choice.

In addition, there is an upgraded version of uniboot LC fiber patch cable - HD uniboot LC fiber patch cable. You can’t miss this one if you are looking for the extreme space saving solution. It is basically the combination of uniboot LC fiber patch cable and HD TAB fiber patch cable. Likewise, two optical fibers are wrapped together in a single strand. The difference is that its connector is attached with a push-pull tab which is more flexible for releasing the connector. It can be applied to data centers and high-density environments.

Keyed LC Fiber Patch Cable

In terms of data security, keyed LC fiber patch cable or secured LC fiber patch cable is the perfect solution. It is designed to prevent unauthorized and inadvertent changes in highly sensitive applications. Keyed LC fiber patch cable is identified by the connector color. Each color of a set of keyed LC connectivity products represents a unique keying pattern that only allows matched color mating. Multiple keyed LC connectivity products are included in this family. The picture below gives an example of the simplex keyed LC connectivity.

Bend Insensitive Fiber Patch Cable

Originally, when bending an optical fiber by stress, there will be a bend loss. This sensitive nature of optical fiber causes low efficiency in optical transmission. But it is hard to deal with the problem as bend loss issue is difficult to locate. Fortunately, bend insensitive fiber patch cable is designed to solve this problem. In this kind of cable, a layer of glass is added around the core of the fiber which has a lower index of refraction that literally "reflects" the weakly guided modes back into the core. Many data centers and FTTH systems are deploying this cable to reach lower signal loss.

Conclusion

From this article, we can see that there still exists many other types of fiber patch cables. And special fiber optic cable solutions are always more effective to special applications. By the way, if you just want a standard optical cable, you may consider from the aspects of fiber type, connector type, connector polishing type, fiber count, cable jacket, etc. These options are fit for average circumstances when choosing the optical cables. Hope you choose the right one according to your requirements!

Source:http://www.fiber-optical-networking.com/applications-special-purpose-fiber-patch-cables.html