The ISO and TIA standardization organizations released the latest cabling standards ISO 11801 3rd and TIA-568.0-D respectively in 2017, which removed the traditional OM1 and OM2 multimode cables and added OM5 wideband multimode cables. /In addition, the bandwidth requirement at 953nm wavelength has been increased.
ISO/IEC JTC1SC25 WG3, a new project ISO/IEC TR 11801-9908, has published the first draft of WD, which is designed to study the wiring guidelines for transmission of high-speed network applications over multimode fibers. The study was conducted.
OM5 Fiber Technology
OM5 multimode fiber supports more wavelength channels, so it is the same direction for SWDM4 with four wavelengths or BiDi with two wavelengths. Similar to BiDi for 40G links, SWDM transceivers require only a two-core LC duplex connection, except that each SWDM fiber operates at four different wavelengths between 850nm and 940nm, with one fiber dedicated to transmitting signals and the other fiber dedicated to receiving signals.
OM5 fiber also supports the future of 400G Ethernet, for higher speed 400G Ethernet applications such as 400G Base-SR4.2 (4 pairs of fiber 2 wavelengths, each channel using 50G PAM4) or 400G Base-SR4.4 ((4 pairs of fiber 4 wavelengths, each channel using 25GNRZ), only 8 core OM5 fiber, compared to Compared to the first generation of 400G Ethernet 400G Base-SR16 (16 pairs of fibers, 25Gbps per channel), the number of fibers required is only a quarter of the traditional Ethernet. SR16, as a milestone in the development of multimode 400G technology, proves the possibility of multimode technology to support 400G. multimode applications.
Optical fiber as a physical transmission medium for data communications to provide support for network equipment, OM5 fiber promotion can not be separated from the support of network equipment manufacturers.
Currently, there are two technologies in the market to transmit high-speed networks with small amounts of fiber: BiDi and SWDM4. From the industry chain, OM5 multimode fiber and BiDi and SWDM4 equipment vendors have formed an industry alliance, but the maturity of this ecosystem depends on the shipment of these 40/100G network devices and the large deployment of OM5 fiber. OM5 multimode fiber testing is identical to traditional OM3, OM4 multimode fiber testing equipment and test procedures, users do not need to purchase additional separate test equipment.
Data centers need to upgrade to 200/400G or even higher rates in the future, will have to face MSA and many other optical module types, in the absence of IEEE standard project environment, users also need to be concerned about whether there is open and standardized multimode wavelength multiplexing technology, low-cost VCSEL 100G technology can make a breakthrough and other issues. Regardless of whether optical modules for parallel transmission or duplex transmission are used in the future, network cabling, as an important network infrastructure for data centers, can be certain that cabling for data centers must be open, scalable and flexible, and able to support a variety of network architecture applications.
