5G construction will bring huge demand for optical fiber, thus deriving new industry technology competition. As we all know, 5G has high speed, low latency and other performance, which can provide more reliable and stable network connection services. At the same time, the demand for base station construction has increased dramatically as the coverage of 5G base stations is limited by the use of high-frequency signals. It is estimated that the total construction of 5G base stations worldwide will reach 6.5 million by 2025, which poses new requirements and challenges to the performance and technological development of optical fiber and cable.
At present, although there are still uncertainties in the network architecture and technical scheme selection of 5G, at the basic physical level, 5G optical fiber and cable needs to meet both the current network application and future development requirements. Here are five popular fiber optic cables for 5G networks that, to some extent, could help solve the practical problems of 5G construction.
1. Easily deploy indoor micro-base station by bending insensitive fiber jumper
The biggest challenge in 5G access network construction is the dense fiber connection between large-scale 5G macro stations and indoor micro base stations. The complex wiring environment, especially the indoor wiring of optical fiber, and the narrow and limited space, put forward very high requirements on the bending performance of optical fiber. Fiber optic cables conforming to ITU G.657.a2 /B2/B3 standards have been greatly improved in terms of bending performance, which can be fixed and bent at wiring corners while ensuring performance.
To solve such problems in 5G indoor applications, many fiber manufacturers have introduced low-loss BIF jumpers.
2. OM5 multi-mode fiber jumper can be applied to 5G core network
Second, 5G service providers also need to focus on building fiber optic networks for data centers to store information. At present, the network transmission rate of data centers is gradually moving from 10G/25G and 40G/100G to 25G/100G and 200G/400G, which puts forward new requirements for multi-mode optical fiber and cable used for interconnecting within data centers. Multi-mode fiber not only needs to be compatible with existing Ethernet standards, meet the conditions for future upgrading to 400G/800G high-rate networks, support short-wave wavelength division multiplexing (SWDM) and single-fiber bidirectional (BIDI) technologies, but also needs excellent bending performance to adapt to high-density data center cabling scenarios.
Under such a market demand background, OM5 multi-mode fiber with broadband emerges as The Times require and becomes a popular choice for data center construction. OM5 optical fiber allows simultaneous transmission of multiple wavelengths in the range of 850-950 nm. At the same time, using four-stage pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) and WDM technology, it can support network transmission of 100Gb/s, 200Gb/s and 400Gb/s within 150 meters, ensuring the future short-distance and high-rate network transmission capability. The above performance makes OM5 multi-mode fiber cable the first choice for internal connection of data center in 5G environment.
3. Micron diameter fiber greatly improves cable density
Due to the complex deployment environment of 5G load-bearing network access layer and aggregation layer, the resources of existing cable and pipeline are limited from time to time. To ensure that more fiber can fit into the limited space, wire manufacturers are working to reduce the diameter and optimize the size of the wire harness.
4. Extend 5G link length with ultra-low loss and large effective area fiber
5G fiber manufacturers are actively exploring ultra-low loss (ULL) fiber technology to extend transmission distances as much as possible. G.654.E optical fiber is one of the most innovative. Different from the conventional G. 652.d and G. 654.e optical fibers used in 10G, 25G and 100G transmissions, they have both larger effective area and ultra-low loss characteristics, which greatly alleviate the nonlinear effect of optical fiber media and improve the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR). Generally, OSNR is highly susceptible to the influence of high-frequency signal modulation mode in high rate connections of 200G and 400G.
As the speed and capacity of 5G core networks continue to improve, the demand for such fiber optic cables will continue to rise.
5. New fiber and cable speeds up 5G network installation
5G network deployment includes two types of scenes, indoor and outdoor, with large task volume and complex environment, so the installation speed has a great impact on the network construction process. All-dry optical fiber USES innovative dry water blocking technology, which can effectively reduce the time required for fiber installation and termination. In addition, the air-blown miniature optical fiber has compact structure, light weight and high fiber density, which maximally increases the number of optical cables to be laid. Due to the adoption of air-blown micro pipe and micro cable wiring technology, this kind of optical fiber is easy to be installed in long, multi-bend and multi-undulate pipelines, which can save manpower and installation time, improve construction efficiency and reduce laying cost. In addition, in the outdoor optical fiber lying, some anti-mouse and anti-bird optical fiber cables are also favored.
At present, optical fiber and cable is the best medium to meet the demand of 5G network construction. 5G networks have high bandwidth, low latency, and complex outdoor deployment conditions, which pose great challenges to fiber manufacturers and create new opportunities for future development. Therefore, fiber optic networks must respond quickly to meet the new demands. It remains to be seen whether 5G fiber manufacturers will be able to roll out other innovative fiber products as soon as possible, in addition to these popular fiber and cable types.
