40Gig & 100Gig OM4 Fiber Cable – The Future
According to a recent study by Cisco Systems, Internet traffic is growing at an annual rate of 46% and is expected to quadruple from 2010 to 2014. This would indicate that the demand for very high speed fiber optic cable used in the backbones of the Internet Networks will increase at a similar large rate. Companies such as Time Warner Cable, Level 3, and RCN Corporation, will be expanding their fiber optic cable networks with 40Gig to 100Gig OM4 Fiber Optic Cable.
Other places for early deployment of 40-100Gig fiber cable will be interconnection links
in corporate data centers between switches, servers and routers, as well as cabling to super computers in medical and military and R&D enterprises. High definition video conferencing systems because of the large bandwidth required will also have a need for this type of fiber cable. iPTV is another possible user of OM4 fiber cable.
One of the most popular choices for extended bandwidth cable will be laser optimized 40-100Gig multimode fiber optic cable to support these applications. OM4 fiber is a 50/125 um multimode laser optimized fiber optic cable with a bandwidth extended to handle 4700 MHz-km EMB (twice the requirement for 10 Gb/s 300 meter support). 40Gig/sec to 100 Gig/sec would utilize parallel optics, in other words multiple fibers and aggregating tranceivers at both ends to transmit at these high total data rates. That is how the overall bit rate is able to exceed the bandwidth supported by the individual fibers. An 850 nm VCSEL light source is usually utilized for this application.
Multimode Fiber Grades are: OM1- Older fiber cable. Not recommended for new cable
OM2- 62.5/125 fiber – OFL Bandwidth 500 Mhz-km provides 550 meter link for Gigabit Ethernet.
OM3-62.5/125 fiber that complies with TIA/EIA-568-B.3
provides up to 1000 meters for Gigabit Ethernet Also used with 50/125 fiber it provides 300 meters at 10 Gigabit specified by ISO 11801.
OM4-50/125 fiber specified by TIA -492AAAD provides 40& 100 Gigabit to 125 meters. This distance is selected because experience shows 90% of the fiber data cables are shorter than 125 meters. A VCSEL light source at 850nm is generally used.
Besides the TIA-492AAAD standard for OM4 fiber approved in August 2009, the IEC is working on an international standard for OM4 fiber (IEC 60793-2-10). OM4 fiber optic cable is currently available from several US cable companies and will become more utilized in the near future.
|
