FttH and Optical distribution network reliability : Europacable newsletter

Telecom networks and FTTH

Widely based on international technical reports, this document gives the key elements and rationale for ensuring optical networks reliability.

This newsletter deals with the key parameters and rationale to choose right opticalfibres and optical fibre cables allowing optical distribution infrastructure long-termreliability.

Special attention is paid to the optical fibres stresses and strains related tothe constraints that this optical distribution network would face in its lifetime.

Thispaper describes how to manage these stresses and strains on the optical fibres bychoosing the right fibres and cables.

In 2020, Europacable published the white paper “Expected lifetime of Passive Optical Infrastructure”. Readers should also refer to this document.

Optical Fibre Distribution Network (OFDN) reliability:
To ensure the robustness of optical fibre networks and to optimise their service life,the following two elements have to be considered.

  • The optical reliability: Which ensures that the transmission of the optical signal willnot deteriorate over the lifetime of the OFDN.
  • The mechanical reliability: Which ensures that the fibres will not breakduring thelifetime of the OFDN.

Whatever the stresses to which the OFDN is exposed, the choice of the right opticalfibres associated to well-designed cables are key elements?

The optical Fibre type – a fundamental choice:
The optical fibre type strongly determines the resilience of the network to the differentevents that it will experience during its lifetime. These “events” will generate bendingstresses on the optical fibres (micro-bending or macro-bending).

To decrease the sensitivity to these bending stresses (macro and micro-bending),the choice of G.657.Ax optical fibres is highly relevant.

What about fibre compression?

The following chart summarizes the different sensitivity of two fibre types for anequivalent micro-bending stress induced by fibre compression (laboratory tests).

Download the documentation

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