What Are the Advantages of Optical Fibre Transmission Compared to Copper Cable?

With the further development of the optical fiber trend, optical fibers have gradually replaced traditional copper cables and have become the mainstream network communications. Compared with copper cables, what are the advantages of optical fibre transmission? This article will answer you.

1. Optical fibre transmission with wide bandwidth and fast speed

In theory, the frequency band of optical fiber can reach 3 billion MHz. Although optical fibers have different losses to the light of different frequencies, the bandwidth in the lowest loss region can contact 30,000 GHz. The use of advanced coherent optical communication can realize the arrangement of 2000 optical carriers in the range of 30,000 GHz for wavelength division multiplexing, which can accommodate millions of channels. At the same time, the optical fibre transmission speed is fast, and it can provide high-speed bandwidth of 10Mbps, 100Mbps, and 1000Mbps to realize the synchronous transmission of two-way data.

2. Optical fibre transmission is light in weight and small in size

Because the optical fiber is skinny, the diameter of the single-mode fiber core wire is generally 4um～10um, and the outer diameter is only 125um. With a waterproof layer, reinforcing ribs, sheath, etc., the diameter of an optical cable composed of 4 to 48 fibers is less than 13mm. It is much smaller than the 47mm diameter of the standard copper shaft cable. In addition, the optical fiber is glass fiber, and its specific gravity is small, which makes it have the characteristics of small diameter and lightweight. The quality of one kilometer of bare fiber is only 27 grams. This feature of fiber makes its laying method convenient and flexible, which can be directly buried, pipelined, underwater and overhead.

3. Optical fibre transmission has large communication capacity

In theory, an optical fiber with a hair thickness can transmit 100 billion voice channels at the same time. Although it has not yet reached such a high transmission capacity, using an optical fiber to simultaneously transmit 240,000 voice paths of the test has been successful. It is dozens or even thousands of times higher than the traditional open wire, coaxial cable, microwave, etc. The transmission capacity of an optical fiber is so huge, and a fiber optic cable can include dozens or even thousands of fibers. If coupled with wavelength division multiplexing technology to use an optical fiber as several, dozens of fibers, the communication capacity of the large is even more impressive.

4. Optical fibre transmission has low loss and long transmission distance

Generally speaking, the attenuation per kilometer of optical fiber access is more than one order of magnitude lower than the attenuation per kilometer of current communication coaxial cables with the largest capacity. At present, the attenuation of commercial silica fiber has reached below 0.19dB/km. If equipped with appropriate optical transmitting and receiving equipment, the optical fiber relay distance can get hundreds of kilometers. The transmission distance of ordinary copper wire (data wire) is only a few hundred meters. Therefore, optical fiber communication is particularly suitable for long-distance primary and secondary trunk communications.

5. Optical fibre transmission had good confidentiality, strong anti-interference ability

Optical fiber only transmits light. It does not conduct electricity and is not affected by electromagnetic fields. Therefore, optical fiber has a strong resistance to electromagnetic and industrial interference. For this reason, the signal transmitted by optical fiber is not easy to be eavesdropped on and therefore has strong confidentiality.

6. The source of optical fibre transmission's raw materials is abundant, and the potential price is low

The most basic raw material for manufacturing quartz optical fiber is silicon dioxide (SiO2), that is, quartz. Quartz is inexhaustible and inexhaustible. Therefore, the potential price of optical fiber is very low.

7. Reliable performance of optical fibre transmission

optical fibre transmission loss has two characteristics. One is that it has the same loss in all cable TV channels. There is no need to introduce an equalizer for equalization like a cable trunk; the other is that its loss hardly changes with temperature, so there is no need to worry about changes in ambient temperature. This causes fluctuations in the mains level. Therefore, optical fibre transmission is safe and stable and can be used in dangerous places like flammable and explosive situations.

8. Optical fibre transmission has strong chemical resistance and long service life

The material of the optical fiber itself is quartz (SiO2), and the outer packaging material is generally a special engineering plastic, which has extremely high corrosion resistance. So it is very adaptable to the environment and has the characteristics of acid and alkali resistance.9. Convenient optical fibre transmission expansionA standard optical fiber dedicated line with a bandwidth of 2M can be easily upgraded to 4M, 10M, 20M, up to 100M, and there is no need to replace any equipment.10. The use of optical fibre transmission metal is less, which is conducive to the rational use of resourcesThe core of the copper cable is made of copper, which uses more metal and is of high quality. So it is not conducive to the rational use of resources. At the same time, the phenomenon of cable theft may also occur. The optical fibre transmission is made of silica, with less metal use and lightweight, conducive to laying and the rational use of resources.