Practical Knowledge About Fiber Optic Cable

The increasing demand of higher bandwidth has become a trend, which push the development of the transmission media. Fiber optic cable is now popular among many users. Consisting of one or more optical fibers, fiber optic cable is used to transmit large amounts of information over longer distances and at higher bandwidths. It plays an important role in optic communication network. This article will focus on practical knowledge about fiber optic cable.

Overview of Fiber Optic Cable

Fiber optic cable has five parts: the core, the cladding, the coating, strengthening fibers and the cable jacket. You can have a basic understanding of the construction of fiber optic cable from the following figure. Fiber optic cable has many types according to different categories, such as singlemode fiber optic cable and multimode fiber optic cable, simplex fiber optic cable and duplex fiber optic cable, indoor cable and outdoor cable, etc. In addition, the common form of fiber optic cable used in networking application is fiber patch cable. Terminated with fiber optic connectors on both ends, fiber patch cable also has many types, such as LC fiber optic cable and SC fiber optic cable.

Advantages And Disadvantages of Fiber Optic Cable

The Advantages of Fiber Optic Cable

• Fiber optic cable has a higher capacity of transmission data rate than most other transmission mediums.
• Fiber optic cable can directly upgrade the transmission capacity without replacing the cable.
• Fiber optic cable is less susceptible to interference.
• Fiber optic cable is secure. It is difficult to tap because it does not emit signals that can be monitored.
• Fiber optic cable is light in weight.

The Disadvantages of Fiber Optic Cable

• Fiber optic cable is expensive—but price has dropped and it becomes more popular.
• Fiber optic cable is difficult to install, because it is susceptible to damage from the environment as well as during the cabling.

Applications of Fiber Optic Cable

Fiber optic cable is widely used in big data center, like 10G, 40G and 100G network, and it is usually used with fiber optic transceiver. Take Ethernet 40G for example, there are 40G QSFP+ SR4 transceiver and 40G QSFP+ LR4 transceiver. The former one is with MTP/MPO interface, so it has to be used with MTP/MPO fiber cable; the latter one is with LC interface, so it has to be used with LC to LC fiber cable single mode.

Fiber optic cable also gains great popularity among home networking users. Recently, some residential internet providers have invested in extending their fiber installations to suburban neighborhoods for direct access by households, such as FTTH (Fiber to the Home) and FTTD (Fiber to the Desk) project.

What’s more, fiber optic cable is applied in different fields, such as mechanical inspections, surgery and dentistry, military and space application, automotive industry, and so on.

Conclusion

As an advanced transmission media, fiber optic cable provides a convenient, cost-effective and easy solution to networking applications. This article mainly introduce the advantages and disadvantages as well as applications of fiber optic cable. And I hope after reading the article, you can have a better understanding of fiber optic cable.