ICT Today

ICT Today January/February/March 2021

Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1327492

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 36 of 67

January/February/March 2021 I 37 Driving the need for bandwidth are on-demand video, the migration of applications to the cloud, and the increasing use of connected devices, often referred to as the internet of things (IoT). In laboratory settings, it is now possible to achieve up to 1000 terabytes per second (TB/s), and over time those speeds will trickle down to access networks. In "Hero" experiments—lab- oratory experiments that demonstrate technology advances—research is moving toward multi-core fibers, with the most exciting result supporting 0.715 petabits per second (Pb/s) traveling 2009.6 km through a loop of 19-core singlemode (SMF) fiber. In access networks, which continue to be stressed as they move closer to the user, the technology driver is densification. According to LightCounting Market Research, the total number of Ethernet devices is estimated to increase 50 percent by 2024. While the majority of the growth is in SMF devices, multimode fiber (MMF) link use will remain an industry staple and continue to see growth over this period, especially in the implementation of building automation and industrial networks. The roll out of 5G solutions also requires network densification, including more antennas. Cabling these areas will necessitate developing high fiber count cables and deploying them in much tighter spaces to meet access and speed requirements. Today 10G is widely used, with 400G and beyond deployments planned. In data centers, which continue to experience explosive growth, the biggest change has occurred in the switch to East-West traffic—defined as the traffic that occurs within the data center. According to Cisco, by 2021 more than 71 percent of traffic will be within the data center. Higher East-West traffic requires more intercon- nects and more transmitters and receivers. To support this, many data centers are deploying 100G single lanes with 400G parallel solutions. On the horizon is 800G enabled by 112 gigabyte (GB) electronics. The increases in bandwidth throughout every segment of the network are going to require more optical fiber everywhere in the network. In the submarine and long-haul market segments, capacity per cable is the main driver supported by both increases in capacity per fiber and the number of fibers in cables. Similar requirements will emerge in the access and data center market segments as 5G rolls out. FIBER USED IN PREMISES NETWORKS The two basic fiber types used in telecom and datacom applications are multimode and singlemode. Tradi- tionally, SMF has been used in long-haul applications and multimode deployed for shorter distances. That distinction is starting to blur as some companies choose to future-proof their networks by deploying SMF in more applications. However, MMF continues to offer advant- ages in short reach, high density connections at 100G and 400G, offering users the performance they need with low total system cost of ownership. This is because MMF's larger core makes it easier to couple light into the fiber, allowing for less expensive light sources, such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) and vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs), to be used as compared to SMF which requires a laser source. That is why multimode continues to be the more economical choice for short reach applications and why it is the main focus herein. THE EVOLUTION OF MULTIMODE FIBER Over the years, the bandwidth performance of MMF has increased significantly. Twenty years ago, 62.5-micron (OM1) fiber dominated the market. That shifted to 50-micron (OM2) fiber with its inherently higher 850 nm bandwidth. As demand continued to grow, new generations of fiber have offered increasingly higher performance with the introductions of OM3, OM4, and OM5, each offering higher bandwidth capability and providing faster transmission speeds and longer reach. The latest generation, OM5, brings additional performance and cable density benefit due to its wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) capability that allows the transmission of multiple wavelengths in a single fiber. This reduces the number of optical fibers needed to increase capacity.

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of ICT Today - ICT Today January/February/March 2021