In the process of integrated wiring, the most indispensable is the fiber optic cable. However, many friends are often puzzled. What is the difference between optical fiber and optical cable, and how to distinguish the quality of optical cable? Let's take a look together.
What are the differences between optical fiber and optical cable
1. Optical fiber is a thin and soft medium that transmits light beams. Most optical fibers must be covered by several layers of protective structures before use, and the covered cables are called optical cables. Therefore, the optical fiber is the core part of the optical cable, and the optical fiber forms the optical cable through the protection of some components and the auxiliary protective layer.
The protective structure of the fiber outer layer can prevent damage to the fiber by the surrounding environment. Optical cable includes optical fiber, buffer layer and coating. Optical fiber is similar to coaxial cable, except that there is no mesh shield. In the center is the glass core through which light propagates.
Optical fibers are usually bundled and protected by a casing. The fiber core is usually a double-layer concentric cylinder with a small cross-sectional area made of quartz glass, which is brittle and easy to break, so an external protective layer is required. So their difference lies in this.
2. Optical cable: It is mainly composed of optical fiber (thin glass filament such as hair), plastic protective sleeve and plastic sheath. There is no metal such as gold, silver, copper and aluminum in the optical cable, and generally has no recycling value. An optical cable is a communication line in which a certain number of optical fibers compose a cable core in a certain way, and are covered with a sheath, and some are also covered with an outer sheath to realize optical signal transmission. Namely: Optical cable is a cable formed by optical fiber (optical transmission carrier) through a certain process.
Advantages of optical cables Optical fiber optical cables are a new generation of transmission media. Compared with copper media, optical fibers have greatly improved in terms of safety, reliability and network performance. The bandwidth of optical fiber transmission greatly exceeds that of copper cables, and the maximum distance supported is more than two kilometers. Fiber optic cables have the advantages of good resistance to electromagnetic interference, strong confidentiality, fast speed, and large transmission capacity.
At present, there are two different types of optical fibers that are more common, namely single-mode optical fibers and multi-mode optical fibers. Multimode fiber is generally used for network connections in the same office building or in a relatively close area. The single-mode optical fiber transmits data with higher quality and longer transmission distance, and is usually used to connect office buildings or geographically dispersed networks. If you use fiber optic cables as network transmission media, you need to add optical transceivers and other equipment.
