OFS now offers AccuCore HCF Optical Fiber Cable, which it asserts is the first terrestrial cabled hollow-core fiber on the market for terrestrial applications. The fact that the optical transmission travels through air in the hollow core reduces latency by approximately 30% versus convention solid silica core fiber. That translates to a savings of 1.54 µsec per kilometer, OFS says.
While hollow-core fiber (also known as “holey fiber” among other names) has been the subject of presentations and demonstrations for several years, commercializing the technology has been challenging due to the difficulty in cabling it in a way that ensures optimal performance, said Daryl Inniss, director of new business development, OFS, and Brian Mangan, member of technical staff. The company sources said OFS has solved these challenges for its photonic bandgap hollow-core fiber and is able to offer the AccuCore in cabled format, with either factory or field fusion-spliced connectors. The company also offers installation services and both passive and active components to meet customer requirements.
The fiber handles similarly to conventional cabled fiber, particularly in regards to bending losses, and acts similarly to single-mode fiber with transmission in the C-Band, said Innis and Mangan. The company is quoting a reach of 1 to 2 km, making it suitable for some mobile backhaul and data center links, as well as for other applications where low latency is essential, such as financial trading. However, OFS reported the ability to transmit 10-Gbps direct-detect DWDM signals across more than 3 km of cascaded cabled hollow-core fiber in a post-deadline paper delivered at this month’s OFC in San Diego.
OFS adds via a product announcement that the AccuCore HCF cable has been deployed to carry live traffic “in several networks.”
[Editor's Note: This article has been amended to correct the latency number in the first paragraph. Light travels through air at a 50% greater rate than a silica core, but the latency improvement is only 30%.]
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