Explore end connections and challenges
Now that we understand these new ribbon designs, we must also explore the ways and challenges of connecting them. According to the national electrical code (NEC), as the cable is only applicable to the outdoor fire rating, so within 50 feet to entering the building must be converted to a indoor fire rating of the cable, usually by the MTP/MPO or LC banded tail fiber (pre-installed at one end of the connector cable) or with a coupler and tail fiber integrated hardware (hardware pre-installed the coupler and the tail fiber) joining together in a high density of molten fiber into the chest. Therefore, in this application environment, users no longer only consider the outdoor optical cable design, but to seek a complete end-to-end solution for this expensive and labor-intensive link deployment.
Several factors must be taken into account when deciding on the best peer-to-peer solution. Time study shows that the most time-consuming process is the ribbon fiber ribbon recognition and the fiber optic cable branch of the fiber optic disc route "branch" refers to the strip fiber optic cable after stripping the outer layer, the ribbon fiber into the hardware to the fiber optic disc in the process, in order to protect the ribbon fiber, will use bellows or mesh sleeve protection. As the number of fiber cores increases, this step becomes more time-consuming and laborious.
Typically, the installation and fusion of single 3456 fiber links requires several hundred feet of bellows or mesh bushing. The same time-consuming process applies to indoor optical cables, whether they are directly fused or fused to the hardware that provides the tailings and couplers. At present, the branch operation time of different optical cable products on the market can vary greatly.
Some indoor and outdoor optical cables are integrated with the branch route fiber optic cable subunit wiring harness, when connected to the fusion plate do not need to branch, and some products need a variety of accessories to branch and protect the cable. The cables are usually mounted on specially made fiber chests and the disc design is optimized to match the number of fibers in the routing subunits.
Another time-consuming task is ribbon recognition and proper sorting to ensure proper welding. Because a 3456 cable contains 288 12-fiber strips, a clear identification is required for sorting after the outer sheath is removed. Standard matrix ribbons can be printed with inkjet printers to identify characters, and many network designs rely on connection Numbers of different lengths and Numbers to help identify ribbons. This step is critical because a large number of fibers and routes must be identified. The ribbon marks are also crucial for network repair when the cable is damaged or cut off after initial installation.
Forward-looking trends
The 3,456 fiber optic cable also looks like a starting point, since the industry is already talking about more than 5,000 fiber optic cables. Since the pipe size has not increased, an emerging trend is that the size of the fiber coating used has been reduced from the industry standard of 250 microns to 200 microns. The size of the core and cladding remains the same, so the optical performance is not affected. This reduced fiber coating size can allow the laying of hundreds or thousands of additional fibers in the same size pipe as before.
Another trend is the growing demand from customers for peer-to-peer solutions. Fiber-optic cables containing thousands of fibers solve the problem of pipeline density, but they also pose a number of challenges in terms of risk and network deployment speed. Innovative solutions that help eliminate these risks and slow deployment will continue to mature and evolve.
Demand for ultra-high-density cables seems to be accelerating. Artificial intelligence, 5G and larger data center campuses are all in some way driving the need for these data centers to be interconnected. These deployments will continue to challenge the industry to develop effectively scalable end-to-end solutions to maximize pipeline resources, rather than make the problem more and more difficult.
