OM5 fiber patch cord: a new solution for high-speed data center cabling

With the surge in data traffic, various emerging services and applications continue to emerge, and the demand for high-bandwidth and high-speed data centers increases rapidly. It is against this backdrop that OM5 fiber was approved as a new type of multimode fiber (MMF) for high-speed data center applications. At the same time, the closely related OM5 optical fiber jumper has also begun to attract widespread attention in the industry. So, what is the widely concerned OM5 fiber optic patch cord? What is the difference between it and the previous OM3/OM4 fiber optic patch cord?

OM5 fiber patch cord

What is an OM5 fiber patch cord?

Fiber patch cords are used as patch cords from equipment to fiber optic cabling links. With a thicker protective layer, it is generally used in the connection between the optical transceiver and the terminal box, and is used in some fields such as optical fiber communication systems, optical fiber access networks, optical fiber data transmission, and local area networks. With the continuous improvement of data centers' requirements for transmission rates, OM5 fiber jumpers have begun to be used more and more.

At the beginning, the OM5 fiber patch cord was called Broadband Multimode Fiber Patch Cable (WBMMF), which was a new standard for fiber patch cords defined by TIA and IEC, with a fiber diameter of 50/125 μm. Compared with other OM3 and OM4 fiber optic patch cords, OM5 fiber optic patch cords can be used for higher bandwidth applications. Because the fiber preform manufacturing process of the OM5 fiber optic patch cord has been significantly optimized, it can support higher bandwidths.

In terms of structure, it is not significantly different from OM3 and OM4 fiber patch cables, so it is fully backward compatible with traditional OM3 and OM4 multimode fiber patch cables. In February 2017, TIA clearly stipulated that the identification color of OM5 fiber optic patch cords is aqua, and the outer sheath colors of OM3 and OM4 fiber optic patch cords are lake blue and purple respectively, and OM3 and OM4 fiber optic patch cords can still be used with OM5 fiber optic cables. The jumpers work together, the only difference is that the color of the outer jacket needs to be changed for easy identification of the OM5 connection.

Three core advantages of OM5 fiber patch cords

There are three core advantages of OM5 fiber optic patch cords. First of all, its first advantage lies in its strong scalability. The OM5 fiber patch cord can combine short wavelength wavelength division multiplexing (SWDM) and parallel transmission technology, and only requires 8-core broadband multimode fiber (WBMMF), It can support 200/400G Ethernet applications, and the future application potential is huge.

The second advantage is that the use of OM5 fiber jumpers can effectively reduce construction and operation costs. The OM5 fiber jumper draws on the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology of single-mode fiber to extend the available wavelength range during network transmission, and can support 4 wavelengths on a 1-core multi-mode fiber, reducing the required number of fiber cores to The previous 1/4, which greatly reduces the wiring cost of the network, is also one of the fundamental reasons for its widespread acceptance.

The third advantage is that OM5 fiber optic patch cords have obvious advantages in compatibility and interoperability, and can support traditional applications like OM3 fiber optic patch cords and OM4 fiber optic patch cords. In addition, it is fully compatible with traditional OM3 and OM4 fiber optic patch cables, and the interoperability between them is extremely strong.

Meet high-speed data center transmission needs

The OM5 fiber patch cord brings strong vitality to the ultra-large data center. It breaks through the bottleneck of parallel transmission technology and low transmission rate adopted by traditional multimode fibers. Not only can it use fewer multimode fiber cores to support higher-speed network transmission, but because it uses lower-cost short-wave wavelengths, the cost and power consumption of optical modules will be much lower than single-mode long-wave laser light sources. optical fiber. Therefore, with the continuous improvement of transmission rate requirements, OM5 fiber patch cords will have broad application prospects in the future 100G/400G/1T ultra-large data centers.

Taking the first generation of 400G Ethernet fiber cabling in the future as an example, a total of 16 fibers are required for sending signals and 16 fibers for receiving signals, and a total of 32 fibers are required for multimode fibers, which means that the data center needs to deploy 32 fibers. The wiring system of the core MPO/MTP interface. Therefore, high cabling costs will inevitably bring enormous pressure to data center operators.

If OM5 fiber jumpers and short-wavelength division multiplexing optical modules are used, only 8 multimode fibers are required in total, of which 4 fibers are used for sending signals, and another 4 fibers are used for receiving signals, and each fiber transmits 4 Each wavelength has a transmission rate of 25Gbps. Therefore, each core fiber of the OM5 fiber jumper can transmit 100Gbps of data. By adopting this short-wavelength division multiplexing and parallel transmission technology, the wiring cost of the data center will be greatly reduced, and it is believed that OM5 fiber optic patch cords will be widely used in the near future.