Bend Radius When installing fiber cables, tower hands should pay attention to the minimum bend radius of the fiber. Standard fiber (complies with ITU-T recommendation G.652D) can maintain a minimum bend radius of five to 15 times the fiber cable diameter. Functionally, this corresponds to about three centimeters, or about one inch. Failure to observe […]
Fusion vs. Mechanical Splicing Unfortunately, damage to fiber optic connectors is common in FTTA installations. If a fiber connector is damaged, either a whole new cable can be pulled or the damaged connector can be replaced. Fusion splicing is one method for attaching a pre-terminated fiber connector with a fiber stub (called a pigtail) to the broken […]
Fiber optic cables are terminated with fiber optic connectors. The construction of the connector involves precise alignment of the end of the fiber with the end of the connector’s ceramic ferrule, which mates with the fiber receptacle. Fiber connectors can be UPC (ultra-physical contact) or APC (angle-physical contact). Generally, UPC is used for purely digital communication applications, such […]
Types of Fiber An optical fiber transmits light through a flexible, transparent strand of pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or “light pipe,” to direct the light. On a cell tower, an optical transceiver module inside the towermounted radio converts the optical signal into electrical signals for […]
While a number of different system designs have been deployed, FTTA cabling architectures generally consist of a smaller base band unit (BBU) at the bottom of the tower and multiple fiber-fed remote radio units (RRUs) at the top of the tower. Fiber cables replace coaxial feeders running up the tower in order to support advanced technologies such […]
