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How to light up dark fiber?
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Dark fiber refers to unused or underused fiber optic infrastructure, including optical fibers, fiber cables and repeaters. We have seen people talking about the benefits of deploying dark fiber, but rarely see them discussing how to light up dark fiber. Today we are going to talk about how to light up dark fiber.
There are several ways to set up a dark fiber network. Point-to-point or point-to-multipoint configurations are the most common ways to install and set up these networks. Dark fiber can also work for ring networks, but if you have a very complex network, using an ISP may be more efficient.
Leasing fiber
As a fiber lessee, when leasing the dark fiber, you are also responsible for buying and maintaining the equipment.
For short links, less than 60km in 10Gbps per DWDM channel, all the equipment that may be required are transmission systems at the end of the link. But for longer distances, the network manager has to consider optical amplification and dispersion compensation. These sometimes come as an afterthought when companies consider leasing dark fiber. Amplifiers, electricity to power them and the amplifier huts needed to house them can contribute significantly to the cost of leased dark fiber network.
The most common equipment needed list as below.
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Optical Transponder - control the optical power
In optical fiber communications, a transponder is the element that sends and receives the optical signal from a fiber. As an important role in WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) system, especially in DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) system, the optical transponder converts the incoming signal from the end or client service to a WDM wavelength.
Instead of simply regenerating the original signal during the process, modern WDM/DWDM transponder is endowed with the 3R system (reshape, retime, reamplify), which is capable of cleaning up, monitoring and amplifying the signal accurately and closely.
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EDFA (Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier) optical amplifier
An optical amplifier amplifies light as it is without converting the optical signal to an electrical signal, and is an extremely important device that supports the long-distance optical communication networks of today.
Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers are the by far most important fiber amplifiers in the context of long-range optical fiber communications; they can efficiently amplify light in the range from 1530 to 1565 nm, where silica-based telecom fibers have their loss minimum.
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Optical Attenuator
Fiber optic attenuator, also called optical attenuator, is a passive device used to reduce the power level of an optical signal.
To strengthen the signal power in fiber optic links is sometimes needed to achieve long-haul data transmission, however, under certain circumstances, too much signal power can overload fiber optic receivers and does harm to the optical network. To reduce the power in fiber links, fiber optic attenuators are leveraged.
Generally, multimode systems do not need attenuators as the multimode sources, even VCSELs, rarely have enough power output to saturate receivers. Instead, single-mode systems, especially the long-haul DWDM network links, often need to use fiber optic attenuators to adjust the optical power during the transmission.
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Optical Transceiver
The optical transceiver is used to convert electrical signals to optical (light) signals and optical signals to electrical signals.
There are many different types of optical transceivers, which come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Most common optical transceivers are GBIC, SFP, SFP+, Xenpak, X2, XFP, CFP, CFP2, CFP4, QSFP28.
OTDR Testing
To ensure that there are no other issues with the dark fiber, a bidirectional OTDR test should be performed. The results should be used to confirm that there are no high splice losses, sharp bends in splice trays, incompatible fiber sections, breaks in the fiber, and other issues.
System and Infrastructure Monitoring
Once the network is operational and is tested and commissioned, both the transmission system and optical infrastructure should be monitored for performance.
Optical network nomitoring systems (ONMS) are used to check the optical infrastructure for any signs of problems which can then be mitigated before network outage. ONMS typically consists of an OTDR and switches to switch the OTDR signal between multiple fibers. When combined with a mapping system, operation personnel can be alerted of a problem and its location so that the problem can be fixed in a timely manner.
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