SFP AOC (Active Optical Cable) Application Guide

1. Introduction of AOC
      Active Optical Cable (AOC), translated as Active Optical Cable; the structure uses a specified length of fiber optic cable to connect two optical modules to form a convenient connection channel, the corresponding cable length can be customized according to the customer's application requirements, the following is the structure of the SFP AOC style;

Figure 1 SFP AOC active fiber optic cable style diagram

2. SFP AOC application description:
      a. SFP AOC due to the factory has been the optical cable and optical modules for the integration of encapsulation, effectively avoiding the operation in complex environments caused by the problem of pollution of the optical interface, with stronger reliability, while reducing the diversity of fiber optic consumables introduced by the material management costs, is widely used in short-distance transmission;
      b. Due to the lightweight and easy-to-install characteristics of active optical cable, it is widely used in the interconnection equipment between the racks of various server rooms, and is currently the most common network connection method in data centers;

Figure 2 SFP AOC applied to the rack on the interconnection of equipment

3. SFP AOC application considerations
      a. due to the inherent characteristics of fiber optic cables, the use of AOC in the process, you need to pay attention to the control of the bending radius of the cable, cabling cable should be the minimum bending radius greater than 20 times the cable diameter of the best, to avoid breakage of the cable resulting in transmission abnormalities;
      b. if the AOC transmission anomaly, need to check the cabling whether there is excessive bending and breaking of fiber optic cables, as shown in the figure below for the appearance of broken fiber optic cables;

Figure 3 fiber optic cable excessive bending damage traces

      c. at the same time can be observed through the switch or network card port DOM information on the link has been obviously disconnected; as shown in the figure below in the network card you can see the port received optical power DOM has been significantly less than the normal value;

Figure 4 SFP AOC port receive DOM abnormal information

      d. if there is a switch or network card can not recognize the AOC module port, you need to contact the manufacturer to consider whether there is a software or coding compatibility problems, and then further analyze the solution.
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