Big data has penetrated into every aspect of everyone's life. The importance of high-speed and high-bandwidth is self-evident. One end is the terminal and the other end is the server. The cable connecting them must be stable and fast. At this point, the AOC active optical cable stands out. Active Optical Cable is the full name of AOC.
It refers to the communication cable that needs to use external energy to convert electrical signals into optical signals, or convert optical signals into electrical signals in the communication process. The fiber optic transceivers at both ends of the optical cable provide photoelectric conversion and optical transmission.
Its structure is very simple. In short, two optical modules are connected by an optical cable, so it is expensive. After all, optical cables are used, and the optical modules at both ends need laser devices.
But in other words, expensive is expensive for a reason. The optical port is not exposed to ensure airtightness. The AOC cable will not have unexpected problems due to the special environment. When a fault occurs, it can be easily checked. So it does not have the DDM function, which further optimizes costs.
In AOC optical module, the optical module and optical fiber are integrated and cannot be separated. The optical cable transportation is much more reliable than the copper cable. The information can be guaranteed, so the working distance is also greatly extended, reaching the common 100-meter model now.
If the optical fiber is fixed in the optical module, fewer optical components will be installed, so that the cost is reduced. Of course, the price of the optical cable cannot be ignored, so the most suitable scene for AOC cables is in the IDC data center room.
Compared with other cables, AOC cables have high transmission rate, long distance, low power consumption, low weight and is easy to use. The fundamental reason why it can achieve so many advantages is that it adopts the optical transmission mode.
Because it is optical transmission, some fatal limitations of passive optical cables or other cables can be solved by embedding optical components or electronic components into the connector. Because of this, there is less and less copper technology in today's data centers and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.
After all, passive optical cables or other cables, more or less, have the disadvantages of heavy weight and large volume. In the data center where space is expensive, it is obviously unable to meet the requirements of high density, especially electrical signals can be electromagnetic interfered with by copper, which will seriously slow down the speed and increases packet loss.
At present, 10G SFP+ AOC branch active optical cable, 40G QSFP+ AOC active optical cable, QSFP+ to 4 SFP+ AOC active branch optical cable have appeared in the fiber optic transceiver market.
In general, the wired transmission of optical communication refers to the passive part, but there are exceptions, such as active optical cables. Active optical cables are composed of multimode optical fibers, optical transceivers, control chips and parallel optical modules.
The optical transceivers at the head and tail of the active optical cable have photoelectric conversion and optical transmission functions, which can be used to improve the transmission speed and transmission distance of the optical cable. At the same time, the AOC cable will not weaken its compatibility with standard electrical interfaces.
