Fibre to the Home

Advances in the telecommunications industry are now being driven by IPTV and triple play networks, fibre communications has become the fourth utility service alongside water, electricity and gas. Consumers expect higher reliability and a high level of service.  At present the broadband market is experiencing a massive increase in the number of customers subscribing, some being at the rate of one customer every 10 seconds.

The drivers behind changing our current infrastructure to use optical fibre within a work environment or dwelling are due to bandwidth limitations on the current infrastructure. This coupled with the fact that customer requirements for high speed connections for a range of applications, from music and movie downloads to sophisticated telephony systems, means there will be a ‘knock back’ effect on global network infrastructure upgrade requirements.

Optical fibre is the clear route forward for offering significantly more bandwidth, vastly increasing the amount of information that can be sent or received over a network.

fibre to the home

FibreFab offers its customers a comprehensive range of high quality, value adding, low cost products available for the following applications:

  • Connectivity
  • Splitting/distribution
  • Management
  • Outside plant
  • Core/metro applications

FTTx

In order to meet the stringent needs of varying Fibre To The x (FTTx) networks, high quality optical components must be used. Whether it is the latest PLC (Planar Light Chip) splitter technology, FBT splitter, custom fibre management or high performance connector, FibreFab can supply them all.

Due to a huge increase in consumer broadband requirements The next generation networks will target Fibre To The Home (FTTH). There are various methods available for building an FTTH network, early design protocols show favoured network designs for FTTH use PON (Passive Optical Network) technology, this offers the advantage that no active (expensive) components are necessary to send the required information to consumers.  To distribute signals to the subscriber PON networks rely on splitter and WDM (WavelengthDivision Multiplexing) technology.

Couplers and Splitters within the FTTx environment Couplers and splitters are fibre optic network components that combine multiple optical channels couplers or divide a single channel into two or more channels (splitters). These components combine or separate optical power without converting or selecting wavelength. All FibreFab products are bidirectional and can be used interchangeably for coupling or splitting optical signals.

Couplers and splitters are used in many applications. In CATV and FTTH PON networks, a single optical channel is split into 32 or more individual channels, each carrying the same information. Tap couplers are used to extract a small portion of the optical signal to monitor power levels or the signal itself. Couplers may merge optical channel on two or more wavelengths onto a single fibre. Couplers and splitters may be supplied as individual components or packaged into protective closures, modules, rack mounted assemblies or other configurations.

Splitter Technology FBT and Planar (PLC)
Two primary technologies are commonly used to fabricate splitters and couplers.

  • Fused Biconic Technology (FBT). Two or more fibres are twisted together, heated and drawn to bring the optical cores into near contact. The combined fibres are mounted on a low-expansion carrier and encapsulated in a low expansion tube. FBT devices allow direct splitting up to 4 ways. Higher split counts are achieved by splicing multiple devices to form multi-stage, concatenated splitters. Concatenated splitters are also called tree splitters.
  • Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC or Planar). A light circuit on an ‘optical chip’ is mounted on a carrier and fibres, usually in ribbon form, are bonded to the edges of the chip. The assembly is encapsulated in a protective enclosure. PLC devices support direct split counts up to 32.

FibreFab offer a range of high spec, quality assured FBT and Planar Splitters. Devices for use in outside plant applications should conform to Telcordia GR1221 and GR1209 or more stringent long term reliability standards. Proper selection will optimise performance at best value. Please contact FibreFab for advice regarding selection in specific applications.