TE develops new data center design employing 12-fiber MPO cabling, connectivity system

TE Connectivity (TE) announced that it has engineered a new option for data center designers looking to improve flexibility in high-speed data center environments. The company says the technology breakthrough was achieved by proving the performance of a 10-connector channel in a data center design currently used by a major European national government.

TE notes that data center designers face expanding restrictions with the flexibility of their infrastructure design because of the increasing speed and volume of data being transmitted across links in modern data centers. These higher transmission speeds limit the number of connectors that can be included within a channel because of the inherent losses each connection point introduces into the transmission path, asserts the company. This, in turn, reduces infrastructure design options, which can compromise the agility of the data center in meeting user demands.

Related: TE's data center universal connectivity platform pulls together fiber, copper cabling options

To improve agility in the European government data center, TE placed a cross-connect in the facility's main distribution area, the horizontal distribution area, and the equipment distribution area, to form part of the design. This meant that a high-performance optical cabling and connectivity solution was required to support the resulting 10-connector channel, as each extra interconnect would add extra loss which could quickly use up the losses allowed in the application loss budget.

To show how this agile design could be delivered, TE demonstrated a 300 foot, 10-connector channel composed of multiple sections of OM4 fiber-optic cable interconnected with TE's MPOptimate 12-fiber MPO system.

The company reports that both 10 Gbps Ethernet and 8 Gbps Fibre Channel transmissions were successfully delivered over the same 300 foot link, with outstanding transmission characteristics as shown on the industry-standard eye-pattern diagram graphic. The eye pattern gives a visual representation of how clearly the data is 'seen' by the receiving equipment in the data center. The measured optical signal integrity through the 300 foot 10-connector channel was nearly identical to that of the original transceiver signal, reports TE.

"The secret to the success of the MPOptimate connector is based on the tight control of the fiber endface geometries and the high-precision polishing techniques used in the manufacturing process," comments Willy Rietveld, head of the enterprise networks fiber-optic group based at TE's fiber laboratories in Den Bosch, Netherlands. "This high level of connector performance gives data center owners more flexibility in designing an infrastructure to support an agile data center."

More information about TE Enterprise Networks and the MPOptimate System can be found at www.te.com/enterprisenetworks.

See also: TE unveils new Cat 6A unshielded cabling system for 10-GbE applications