With the falling cost of the Ethernet equipment, 10GBase-T has becomes the prevailing trend in the system design. Basically, the data transmission rate for horizontal cabling and backbone bears a ratio of 1:10 to avoid any traffic congestion. Currently, Cat 6 is widely used for the horizontal cabling, which provides 1000Mbps to the desk. To ensure smooth network traffic, 10G fibre optic cable should be used in backbone.
Optic Fibre Cables becomes the best choice because of its compact size, high transmission capacity and bandwidth. Optic Laser is mainly of two categories: One is LED using multimode fibre as the transmission media and another is laser using single mode fibre cable as the transmission media. Single mode cable can certainly fulfill the 10G Ethernet requirement but the cost of laser equipment is extremely high. Traditional multimode fibre cable can support 10G application over a short distance of around 50m and may not be adequate for support the backbone traffic. To support 10G Ethernet application, VCSEL ( Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers) was then developed. VCSEL combines the strong characteristics of laser including response time, narrow transmission bandwidth and the special strength of LED such as high coupling efficiency and low equipment cost. Special 50/125um fiber cable is designed to work in harmony with VCSEL equipment at 850nm wavelength for supporting 10Gbps over 300m drive distance and 1000Mbps over 900m drive distance. Relatively speaking, the cost of optimized the 50/125um fiber cable is slightly higher than traditional fiber cable. In June 2002, IEEE approved the new standar for 10G Ethernet. In September 2002, the ISO/IEC 11801 also standardized a new categorization for the multimode fiber cables. Under the new categorization, multimode fiber cables are classified under OM1, OM2 and OM3 category. OM1 refers to the traditional 62.5um fiber cables. OM2 refers to the traditional 50um fibre cables and OM3 refers to the new optimized 50um fiber cables. The bandwidth of traditional 62.5um is only 200Mhz under 850 nm wavelength and 500Mhz under 1300nm wavelength. This bandwidth is far inadequate for supporting 10G Ethernet application. However, with the invention of OM3 fiber cable, 10G Ethernet application can now be fully supported with OM3 fiber cable which can offer 2000Mhz bandwidth at 850nm wavelength.
Below is the bandwidth and the maximum transmission distance of different fiber cables for 10G Ethernet application.
| Fiber Type | Bandwidth 850nm Mhz*km |
Bandwidth 1300nm Mhz*km |
1Gbps Transmission Distance | 10Gbps Transmission Distance | Fiber Class | ||
| Multimode | @850nm | @1300nm | @850nm | @1300nm | |||
| Traditional 62.5/125μm | 200 | 500 | 275m | 550m | 33m | 300m | OM1 |
| Traditional 50/125μm | 400 | 800 | 500m | 1000m | 66m | 450m | OM1 |
| Traditional 50/125/62.5μm | 500 | 500 | 550m | 550m | 82m | 300m | OM2 |
| 50/125μm-110 | 600 | 1200 | 750m | 2000m | 110m | 850m | OM2+ |
| 50/125μm-150 | 700 | 500 | 750m | 550m | 150m | 300m | OM2 |
| 50/125μm-300 | 1500 | 500 | 1000m | 550m | 300m | 300m | OM3 |
| 50/125μm-550 | 3500 | 500 | 1000m | 550m | 550m | 550m | N.A |
| Single Mode | @1310m | @1550nm | 1310/1383/1550nm | ||||
| Traditional 9/125μm | 5000m | 10000m-40000m | |||||
Below are the attenuation and chromatic dispersion values for different fiber types.
| Traditional Single Mode Fiber | Zero Water Peak Fiber | Non Zero Disperson Shifted Fiber | |||
| Long Haul | Metro Area | ||||
| Nominal Attenuation Values （ dB/Km ） | 1310nm | 0.33 | 0.34 | N/A | 0.35 |
| 1383nm | 0.40 | 0.31 | 0.32 | 0.32 | |
| 1550nm | 0.19 | 0.19 | 0.20 | 0.20 | |
| 1625nm | 0.21 | 0.21 | 0.21 | 0.21 | |
| Nominal Chromatic Disperson Values （ dB/Km ） | 1310nm | 0 | 0 | N/A | - 11.5 |
| 1550nm | 16.5 | 16.5 | 4.5 | 4.5 | |
| 1625nm | 23 | 23 | 10.5 | 8.5 | |
In view of emerging 10G Ethernet requirement, Addison put forward 10G fiber solution, MATRIXLIGHT system. MATRIXLIGHT is a 10G fiber system offering OM3 50/125 fiber cables and single mode fiber cables in full compliant with IEC 60793-2 and TIA 492AAAC DMD. Working with VCSEL, the OM3 fiber cable can support 10Gbps transmission speed over 300m, complying to ISO/IEC11801-2 nd standard. Addison OM3 fiber cable can support low cost 10G serial transmission technology. In 10G Base-SR, there are two operating bandwidths One is the 1500/500 Mhz.km and another is 2000Mhz.km, both supporting 850nm light source, and generally support backbone and fibre to the desk solution. Addison OM3 fiber cables works in full harmony with the fiber patch panels and components in order to support the existing network topology and can be deployed in either the backbone or horizontal cabling. Lastly, Addison single mode cable features a very low attenuation of 0.7dB/km, which significantly increase the transmission distance from 5 Km supported by 1Gbps to 40 Km supported by 10G.
Traditional multimode fiber cannot be deployed in long distance transmission. Following the wide installation base for Cat 6 systems, it is expected that 10G fibre cable will be widely use in the backbone cabling. Before 1000Mbps Ethernet come into play, selection of fiber types is very straightforward. With a drive distance of 2,000m and transmission speed of OC-12 (622Mb/s), 62.5/125um multimode fiber cable is adequate for any applications. Beyond this distance and speed, single mode fiber cable will be deployed. With the development of OM3 multimode fiber in the industry, the transmission distance can be greatly increased under the 850nm wavelength with the use of OM3 fiber cables and VCSEL and the OM3 fiber solution becomes the best cost effective cabling solution. When transmission distance exceed 1,000m, single mode cable is still the only solution right now, the transmission distance of single mode cable can reach 5000m at 1310nm wavelength for 1000Mbps speed rate and 10000m for 10Gbps rate. When transmission distance is less than 1,000m, OM3 multimode fibres can be considered for 1000Mbps but for 10Gbps, single mode cable has to be used. When transmission distance is less than 300m, OM3 multimode cable can be used in both the 1000Mbps and 10Gbps applicatio.
Addison has upgraded the multimode fiber from OM1 to OM3 and even OM3+ which can support of 10Mbps transmission over 550m and also 1000Mbsp over 1100m. Further, Addison has also launched out single mode Zero Water Peak fiber cables to support full bandwidth transmission. Addison 10Gbase-SR OM3 fiber cable features low cost and high efficiency, thus ensuring the highest return in the system investment and becomes the most preferred fiber to the desk solution in the industry.
