Comparison of several types of Integrated Wiring and optical fiber cables

Comparison of several types of Integrated Wiring and optical fiber cables

What is indispensable in the process of Integrated Wiring is optical fiber cables. What are the advantages of optical fiber cables?

The cable type should be comprehensively considered from the cable usage, required transmission capacity, transmission bandwidth, and price. Cable types include unshielded twisted pair wires, shielded twisted pair wires, and optical cables.

(1) unshielded twisted pair UTP (UTP) is the most widely used cabling system in China. It is suitable for network applications with a transmission bandwidth of less than MHz and no special performance requirements, the advantage is that the overall performance is good, the price is low, and the construction and maintenance are relatively convenient. The cat6 cabling system has reached the performance limit of unshielded twisted pair wires.

(2) Aluminum Foil shielded twisted pair FTP with high bandwidth and strong anti-interference performance. Relatively, the cable bending performance is slightly lower than the non-shielded cable price and installation cost. Cat6 and earlier shielding systems mostly adopt this form.

(3) independently shielded twisted pair STP. Each wire has an aluminum foil shielding layer. The four wires are combined with a common metal braided shielding layer, which is the standard structure of the seven wires. It is suitable for high-speed network applications, provides highly confidential transmission, and supports new applications in the future. It helps unify the wiring platform of current network applications and enable various information from email to multimedia videos, can be transmitted in the same high-speed system.

The extra shielding layer makes the seven cables have a large wire diameter. These features require special care when designing and installing routes and terminal space, to keep a lot of space and a large bending radius, Corning has launched seven types of cabling systems in China.

As early as, wiring standardization organizations and manufacturers have proposed seven copper cabling systems. Corning released a MHz seven-class cabling system in. It can provide at least MHz of overall attenuation to the crosstalk ratio and MHz of the overall bandwidth, and its connection header requires all the lines at MHz to provide at least 60 dB of Integrated near-end string winding. The cat5e system only requires 43dB at MHz, and cat6 requires 46dB at MHz.

Moreover, thanks to its excellent shielding design and high bandwidth, a typical seven-class channel can even provide a pair of 8-MHz bandwidth for transmitting cable TV signals at the same time, transmit analog audio signals on the other line, and then transmit high-speed LAN information on the third and fourth lines. This kind of application is unimaginable at present, but will soon be implemented by seven-class cabling systems. Currently, the seven-class cabling systems launched by Corning have already reached the industry-leading bandwidth of megamhz.

Compared with the optical fiber LAN, the seven-class system solution provides the desired performance and bandwidth, but the overall cost is only a fraction of the optical fiber. Some people think that the optical fiber system can bring enough bandwidth to people, and the price of the optical fiber is close to that of the seven types of cables. However, considering the cost factors of the optical fiber router, optical switch, and optical network card, the price advantage of the optical fiber will soon be lost.

(4) optical cables, especially single-mode optical cables, can be used for high-speed network transmission. They have the advantages of intrinsic electromagnetic interference immunity, high reliability, and support for long-distance transmission. They are ideal network transmission media in the future, its position is becoming increasingly important. However, optical cable equipment, materials, and end-to-end connectors are expensive and complicated to install. Therefore, they are generally suitable for long-distance and large-capacity cabling.

At present, 62.5/125 μM multi-mode optical fiber cables have become the mainstream cabling medium in the Integrated Wiring trunk system, and their applications in the horizontal system have become increasingly widespread, corning has launched a full range of optical fiber cabling systems from fiber to desktop, and officially launched a 10G optical fiber cabling system in May.

The new version of TIA/EIA-568-B.3 specifies the mechanical properties and transmission performance of optical fibers, connection hardware, and optical fiber jumpers. Compared with 568-A, the most significant enhancement is the recognition of 50/125 μm multimode optical fiber, and in addition to SC connectors, also recognized small components (SFF) optical fiber connectors as work areas of the connector.

The use of the SFF connector brings many benefits to end users. For example, the larger size of the SC connector cannot support the industrial trend of equipment interface development towards high density, the SFF connector can easily connect two-core optical fiber in the same space as the RJ-45.

As TIA recognizes SFF optical fiber connectors, optical fiber equipment manufacturers such as CISCO, 3Com, and IBM have integrated these interfaces into their products.