In today’s hyperscale data centers, fiber optic transmission speeds can exceed 800Gbps (1.6Tbps is possible, though not widely adopted). For context, outmoded copper cable achieves 25-30Mbps. Despite fiber’s enhanced capacity, more innovation is needed to serve growing global demands for data. Recent innovations include hollow core fibers, space division multiplexing (SDM), and bend resistant fibers.
This blog explores how innovation in fiber optic technology drives seamless data flow in the hyperscale facilities of tomorrow and expands on the coming challenges facing digital leaders. For more information about advances in fiber optic technology, and to learn how AFL can assist you with your next optical connectivity project, visit AFL. Let’s begin.
Hollow core fibers: A hole new era for fiber optic cable
While the fundamental concept of fiber optics dates to the 19th century, limitations in manufacturing technology hindered the production of low-loss fiber cables until the mid-20th century. These early fibers were too impure to reliably transmit signals. However, within two decades, significant advancements, particularly by researchers like Charles Kao, helped overcome these limitations, leading to the development of modern fiber optic cables and high-speed communication through light traversing glass. Today, as we strive for even greater capabilities, we welcome the next step in the evolution of fiber: hollow core fibers.
Hollow core fiber design comprises a series of holes (arranged in a honeycomb-like pattern), which direct light to a hollow core of low-density air. As air is less dense than glass, signals passing through the fiber’s hollow core encounter less friction, resulting in greater signal purity and lower latency. By reducing optical nonlinearity, hollow core fibers have the potential to support broader ranges of wavelengths, meaning greater rates of data transmission with increased efficiency.
Space division multi-plexing: The shape of things to come
Space division multi-plexing (SDM) is the next step in traditional wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). In simple terms, WDM uses different wavelengths of light to transmit data across a single fiber optic cable. However, this process comes with unique challenges, including crosstalk, amplification requirements (and the associated costs), and ongoing monitoring efforts to prevent wavelength drift.
In contrast, SDM technology uses different cross-sectional ‘shapes’ of light to create multiple delineated pathways inside a single fiber cable, improving overall system reliability by reducing the knock-on impact of an isolated channel failure on other spatial paths in the fiber cable.
Bend-resistant fibers: The flexible game-changer
As a rule, a fiber cable’s maximum bend stress is around ten-to-twenty times the outer diameter of the cable jacket. For example, were the cable to measure 2mm in diameter, the cable’s theoretical bend radius would equal 20-40mm. This amount of bend is sufficient to enable smaller diameter cables to corner around objects without impacting signal strength, but beyond this bend radius, signal purity may degrade.
Digital leaders must address the unique maneuvering and deployment challenges associated with large high-fiber-count cables inside data center environments on a case-by-case basis, often requiring costly resourcing for on-site planning. The solution is bend-resistant cables (or bend-insensitive fibers).
The main benefit of bend-resistant fiber optic cabling is simplified installation—bend resistance allows for easy routing in any data center environment, which in turns paves the way for more efficient use of data center white space.
AI and fiber optic connectivity: Collaboration and co-innovation
Growing global appetites for data place extra expectation on bandwidth and hyperscale’s ability to cope with the unprecedented computational aspect of meeting demand.
Innovation in fiber technology builds on existing solutions to enhance connectivity levels steadily and consistently. Meanwhile, the industry requires new and purpose-specific advances in platform interoperability to ensure compatibility across all systems. Collaboration and co-innovation across emerging fiber technologies and advancements in AI networking and data exchange go hand in hand to ensure efficient communication and device enablement.
In this way, continued compatibility between fiber optic technologies, components, and AI systems ensures the exascale number of connections (paired with ultra-low latency connectivity) required to futureproof the hyperscale data centers of tomorrow.
Multi-core fibers: Data center throughput
Multi-core fibers (MCF) deploy multiple cores in same fiber strand for increased data capacity. Advances in MCF enable simultaneous two-way data transmissions inside a single fiber optic cable. The obvious end-user benefit of MCF is increased capacity within a smaller space. Data-intensive services and applications requiring high-speed two-way communication (such as cloud computing and interactive streaming services) benefit from enhanced bandwidth capacity to enable high-performance throughput.
Fiber optic innovation: Key challenges
To keep step with increasing network bandwidth demands, and to explore advancements in data transmission (e.g., orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, or OFDM, which employs fiber subchannels to minimize signal distortion), digital leaders and hyperscalers must first prioritize and overcome many macro-scale key challenges impacting the industry. Signal amplification, dispersion compensation, and increased transmission distances may be the goal, but to get there, we must first pay attention to the following advanced fiber network security challenges:
- Eavesdropping: Accessing fibers to intercept data
- Port monitoring: Accessing on-site ports to bleed data at connection points
- Alien wavelength: hijacking fiber cables to limit the performance of legitimate wavelengths
- Signal jamming: Increasing data center crosstalk to overwhelm and deny legitimate transmissions
- Service denial: Attacks include flooding network data to bottleneck activity and impact performance
Conclusion: the fast lane is getting faster
Innovations in fiber optic technology seek to enhance hyperscale network performance while reducing the many known complexities of installation, connectivity, scalability, maintenance, and upgrades. By 2025, global appetites for data will exceed 180 zettabytes, where one zettabyte equals one trillion gigabytes—the zettabyte era signifies a massive volume of data, with some estimates suggesting it would take more than 17,000 years to watch every minute of video on YouTube in 2023. To ensure the industry marches in step with the rising demand for data, innovations in fiber optic technology must continue to gather speed. For expert assistance in planning, installing, and maintaining your next fiber optic connectivity project, contact AFL.