Nowadays, with the fast development of advanced PoE fiber optic devices, fiber optic link has become a crucial application in Ethernet networking systems for small-to-medium sized business like hotel, hospital or even home usage. The fiber optic link is accomplished by using fiber optic cable between devices. Today, we are going to instruct you on some ways to help your IP devices get sufficient power efficiently and safely, especially focus on ways to send power together with fiber optic cable.
Before you dive into the world of employing fiber optic technology, you are supposed to have a close look on how fiber optic cable benefits you in your PoE networking system.
Fiber optic cable is an assembly similar to electrical cable that is made up of ultra thin strands of glass or plastic called optical fibers in extremely lightweight covers with a protected insulated casing. Its light weight and size make it a good choice to employ in constrained space as it requires less space and you are able to install easily.
It transmits data and information via light particles or photons pulses, as you know light is one of the fastest transmission media though the light signal is not transmit at the speed of light, it comes with only about 30% slower speed in your network system to provide incredibly fast speed network to your network devices with low latency as well as travel further distance up to 80km because of less attenuation(signal loss).
Additionally, with a result of its material, it features less affected by other interference such as electromagnetic interference(EMI), offering stable connection even at outdoor bad weather conditions, and there is less frequency on maintenance and replacement.
More importantly, it comes with higher bandwidth than wired cable as it carries far more data under the same diameter so as to reach 10G network more easily, which is its most significant advantage as you can get high quality video stream or data communication.
After having a close look at the advantages of fiber optic link, there is no denying that fiber is worth checking out. If you decide to employ fiber optic technology in your networking system, one thing you should note is that fiber optics transmits via light signal so it only carries network signal to front-end powered devices. That said, it is unavoidable for you to confront the problem of dealing with power supplies for your long distance IP devices. Typically, there are different ways to get your IP devices powered, here we take PoE IP cameras for instance.
On-site 220V AC Power source
The ideal situation is that you can easily find or access 220V AC outlets close to your front-end network devices. This is the simplest way to finish as you just need to directly plug the DC power adapter that is connected to your media device to a 220V AC outlet. Actually, when utilizing fiber optic technology, you need to rely on some Ethernet extension or signal conversion devices, such as fiber media converter, fiber PoE extender as well as fiber PoE switch and so on. Some of them adopt PoE technology to offer you convenience to supply power and network together to the PoE IP camera. But some devices only deliver network, in this situation, a PoE injector could help to eliminate AC outlets near PoE IP camera and enable the power supply placed at location for up to 200m away from your PoE IP camera.
Composite fiber powered cable
However, as to those applications at some remote places that are not easy to find or deploy AC outlets, on-site 220V power supply seems not to work. Besides, apart from this reason, or sometimes you may want to eliminate the responsibility or hassle to manage the remote power for the reason that it probably comes with a problem to be stolen by others, which demands for an extra fee on hiring people to monitor the practical situation.
In this scenario, you need to find a way to send the power together with the data from the back-end main network or sub main network where it is under control. There is a product called composite fiber power cable that may do good to you. This kind of cable is an advanced cable that makes copper wires combined with fibers to transmit power and fiber signal together via a single cable. This cable saves the hassles of remote power supply deployment, management and maintenance.
However, you may need to invest more labor on running a bulk of composite cable in a deployment for dozens of or hundreds of PoE IP cameras for the reason that copper wires are not in a lightweight. Moreover, this kind of cable can only support low power devices after its long distance transmission or sufficient power supply occurs occasionally, which fails to ensure a stable operation for front-end network devices. Additionally, it may also have a higher possibility to cause damage to the device and cable as copper wires are more easily influenced by power surges during lightning days, especially to those outdoor applications.
Pre-terminated Cable Combines with Pure Copper Wires
To remain the native feature that fibers have less interference with EMI due to its material, it is advisable to run fiber cable and power cable separately in situations where you can’t obtain on-site power supply near the deployment locations, which is rather safer and easier and it is a useful method to reduce loss and maintenance.
You are opt to utilize pre-terminated fiber optic cable to realize easy connection between devices without field termination. This can be regarded as a compensation of those time and money spend on separate data and power cabling. You know extremely long distance is a factor that triggers serious power drop. Therefore, using the method of separate cabling calls for limitation of connection distance, for further transmission, you are supposed to use pure copper wires to reduce power drop.
But if you desire to finish a reliable fiber optic link but the power source is a little bit far away from the media conversion devices, then how to guarantee your PoE IP camera to receive standard power input would be a key problem waiting to solve. A device that comes with wide power input range and low voltage consumption as well as automatic voltage boost function is a fair option to deal with the problem. That means you are able to place the power source at the location that you are convenient to access or manage. Fortunately, Fastcabling’s fiber PoE extender is specially designed to serve your needs. It enables you to place the power sources(AC/DC) away from it at a maximum of 2.5KM, giving you great flexibility on fiber PoE network system deployment.
What’s more, as mentioned previously, in terms of some outdoor applications, especially in an industrial environment, it is imperative to choose devices that can withstand hard working circumstances, such as water, dust and high temperature etc. Generally, a qualified outdoor industrial standard device doesn’t have a built-in power supply, that means you need to use external power source unit(PSU) to make the 220V adapts to your media conversion devices. Generally these devices are designed with 48V power input, then you can choose different output power according to total power consumption of your front-end devices.
| To sum up, for fiber optic cable to get power, several ways for you to choose from, each method has its advantage, you can take one suit for your application mostly. Any questions about power supply in fiber optic link would be welcomed greatly. |
