Fibre optic duplex patch cable LC/LC 50/125µ, OM5, lime green, 10.0m
- Connections: Duplex plug LC - Duplex plug LC
- Data rate: multimode OM5
- Wire material: fibre
- Connector material: ABS
- Colour plug: grey
- Cable colour: lime green
OM1 to OM4 fibre optic cables can only send wavelengths of 850 nanometres. As a result, data can only flow in one direction. Therefore, at least two fibres are always needed, one for sending and one for receiving. This applies at least to data rates of up to ten gigabits per second. At higher data rates, such as 40 to 100 gigabits, the data streams are split into packets of ten during transmission and then combined again at the receiver. The technical term for this is "parallel optical transmission". Therefore, for the transmission of 40 gigabits, four fibres are needed for transmission and just as many for reception, i.e. a total of eight. For 100 gigabit, 20 fibres are used accordingly.
In an OM5 cable, the techniques Short Wave Division Multiplexing (SWDM) and Wideband Multimode Fibre (WBMMF) are combined. Older multimode fibres are optimised for the wavelength range of 850 nanometres. Using SWDM technology, wavelengths between 850 and 950 nanometres can be used for transmission. OM1 to OM4 fibres can only work with one wavelength range. For this reason, WBMMF is also needed for the OM5 standard. With this, several wavelengths can be transmitted. This enables transmission rates of up to 400 gigabits per second. This results in a better bandwidth length product for OM5, which describes how many oscillations can be sent over a certain distance with a fibre-optic cable without loss until the signal has to be renewed.
Like the previous OM1-OM4 standards, the OM5 technology is suitable for cables up to 150 metres in length. These cables are used, for example, in high-performance servers, data centres or in building cabling.
