Berk-Tek and Ortronics/Legrand have launched a fiber-optic cable plant loss budget calculator application designed to simplify structured cabling system planning.
The companies say the tool moves beyond simple attenuation and insertion loss considerations to demonstrate the advantages of utilizing low differential mode delay (DMD) optical fiber coupled with reduced modal noise connections.
According to the companies, via the tool, relying upon the DMD characteristics of 50-micron laser optimized multimode fibers (LOMF) such as Berk-Tek's GIGAlite-10 and GIGAlite-10XB products, a portion of the loss penalty reserved by the IEEE for Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) can be reassigned to the channel's total allowable cable and connection loss budget.
The companies note that their jointly developed NetClear MM10 fiber solution effectively reduces ISI penalties associated with high speed transmission systems such as 10GBASE-SR. 10GBASE-SR is the IEEE standard for multimode 10-Gbit/sec Ethernet operating at the 850-nm wavelength.
"Taking advantage of these technologies provides significant increases in the cable plant loss budget, allowing additional insertion loss headroom, critically important for today's most advanced 10-Gbit/sec systems," says Todd Harpel, director of marketing for Berk-Tek.
"This improvement in budget translates into higher pass/fail limits and/or flexible systems with additional connector mated pairs such as those found in pre-terminated 'ready to connect systems' such as the Ortronics Momentum cassette-based system," adds Mike Hines, director of fiber systems and products at Ortronics/Legrand. "This plug-in and go approach is significant in the design of data centers where there are short link length requirements, a need for rapid installation, and frequent moves, adds and changes."
The Microsoft Excel-based too can be downloaded from the NetClear website at http://www.netclear-channel.com/nc/technical-information/link-loss-calc/.
The companies say the tool is the only one of its kind to inform users whether a specific cable and connector configuration can reliably support 10-Gbit/sec Ethernet according to the 10G BASE-SR standard.