Certified Fiber Optic Installer Training Manual: Modules 1 & 2, Exams of Network Design

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Certified Fiber Optic Installer

Remote Certification Training

(TR-CFI-RCT Version)

Student Manual

Modules 1 & 2

A TFS Authorized Training Provider

TM-CFI V.01.01.24 RCT Version

Demonstrate Gain valuable For those practical Overviews knowledge of who design, knowledge of the Hands on the skills install, or fiber optic skills needed needed to maintain theory, for the final safely and fiber optic codes, TFS Installer competently systems standards, Certification install fiber and practices optics

Certified Fiber Optic Installer Training

Welcome to the FiberOptic.com Certified Fiber Optic Installer training.

FiberOptic.com is an Authorized TFS Certification Training Provider. As such this training is an integral part of the steps necessary to achieve the valuable TFS (The Fiber School) Installer certification credential. Further information can be found at our website.

All instructors are FiberOptic.com Certified Instructors and maintain BISCI, ETA and TFS certification credentials appropriate to their individual areas of responsibility and experience.

Objectives

If you design, install, maintain, or supervise those who do, this training will identify you as one who demonstrates a practical knowledge of fiber optic theory, codes, standards, and practices widely accepted in the telecommunications industry today.

In addition, this training provides an overview of the hands on skills, which you will perform for the RCT lab portion of this course.

You will also gain valuable knowledge of the skills applicable to all the functions necessary to safely and competently install fiber optics communications cabling.

Module #1 encompasses Fiber Optic Basic Theory , while Module #2 is the installation part for the Certified Fiber Optic Installer certification credential.

Module #2 Section 3 ............................................................................................................. 101 Power & Loss Budget ....................................................................................................... 101 Example of a Practical Fiber Link Budget Exercise ........................................................... 102 Testing Optical Fiber (Overview) ...................................................................................... 107 Optical Testing Tier 2 ....................................................................................................... 118 Tier 2 Testing - Reading Trace Results.............................................................................. 122 Basic Evaluation of a Practical Trace Exercise .................................................................. 124 Module #2 Section 4 ............................................................................................................. 128 Standards Organizations and Codes................................................................................. 128 Trays Panels and Enclosures............................................................................................. 132 OSP Enclosures ................................................................................................................. 133 Installation Practices ........................................................................................................ 135 Cable Management .......................................................................................................... 138 Restoration Planning ........................................................................................................ 143

GLOSSARY ____________________________________________________ 145

Blue font denotes Glossary Items contained in this manual. View the on-line

glossary for a complete listing.

Red font denotes important installer information.

THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS

The Fiber School (TFS) Certified Fiber Optic Installer (CFI) Certification identifies you as an installer who understands the basic concepts of fiber optics installation and service as they apply to all the functions required to safely and competently install fiber optics communications cabling.

The successful completion of this training, including the technical examination, will qualify you to apply for the TFS Fiber Optic Installer Certification.

Certification Requirements

The requirements for the valuable TFS Fiber Optic Installer Certification, in addition to the successful completion of this on-line training, includes:

1. This on line course (TR-CFI)
2. The on-line course Technical Exam (TE-CFI)
3. The written Practical Exam and Workbook (TP-CFI)
4. The online labs (TR-CFI-TAM-RCT)

Technical Exam: TE-CFI

This exam must be passed in order to qualify for certification in our Certified Fiber Optic Installer training.

This exam is 50 questions encompassing a combination of multiple- choice, fill-in, diagram drawing, or other similar questions.

This exam is to be completed on-line as part of this Certified Fiber Optic Installer training.

Practical Exam Exercises Workbook

The successful completion of a written Practical Exam (TP-CFI) encompassing problem-solving exercises which demonstrate the applicant’s competency, ability, and knowledge of fiber optic theory, codes, standards and practices which are widely accepted in the telecommunications industry today.

TR-CFI-TAM-RCT Guided Labs

The attendance and successful completion of this training requires the:

1. Viewing of the guided labs

2. Completion of the lab assignments

3. Submission of the labs for review

Technological Advancements

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

In 1937 Alec Reeves invented the process of converting analog signals into digital form. Pulse code modulation (PCM) is the heart of technology in communications in today’s digital world. PCM is a process in which analog signals are converted to digital form for transmission. Since then he has been referred to as the 'Father' of the Information Age.

Pulse code modulation is the basis for all modern digital communications and media, the main motor for change in the 21st century and perhaps the key technology of the future.

The digital signal is represented by a series of pulses and non-pulses (1 or 0 respectively). The stream of pulses (1s and 0s) are not easily affected by interference and noise. Even in the presence of external noise, the presence or absence of the pulse can be easily determined.

Since PCM signals are digital, they are easy to process by inexpensive and standard techniques, making it easier to implement complicated communication systems.

PCM is used in many ways in our day to day life. Digital radios, CDs, DVDs, the internet and digital telephones are all examples of PCM.

1950s: Optical fibers were developed and placed on the market in the 1950’s as light guides that enable one to peer into an otherwise inaccessible location such as into a person’s body or the interior of an engine.

An enormous amount of light was lost in these early devices, but for the few feet involved in these types of applications, it didn’t matter.

1960s: Hughes research announced the operation of the first laser. The laser provided an extremely narrow and intense beam, but it was found that fog and rain could interrupt the beam as it was sent through the atmosphere.

1970: Corning developed fiber that had an attenuation of .5dB/km at 1200 nm. The invention of the first low-loss optical fiber and the manufacturing process used to produce it revolutionized the telecommunications industry and established the optical fiber category.

1976: Bell Laboratories demonstrated a fiber optic system that worked over a distance of 10km without repeaters.

Commercial Applications

In 1977 AT&T began the installation of the world's first lightwave system to provide a full range of telecommunications service over a public switched telephone network (PSTN).

As a replacement for a copper system, this lightwave system, extending about 1.5 miles under downtown Chicago, used glass fibers that each carried the equivalent of 672 voice channels

1980: When the divestiture of AT&T occurred in January 1, 1984 the door was opened to revolutionize the fiber field. By 1985 long wavelength operation at 1550 nm had become a practical application.

1995: Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) development begins. Multiplexing is simply a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium.

Today one will find fiber optics used within the Interexchange Carriers (IXCs), the Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) and in Local and Wide Area Networks (LANs).

Too much power can be addressed by using an optical attenuator, a passive device used to reduce power level without substantial distorting of the waveform.

Medium The Medium describes the material over which the signals travel. Optical Fiber or “Glass” is the medium that carries the optical signal.

Connectors Connectors are simply interface devices that allow the medium, our optical fiber, to be plugged into the Transmitter and the Receiver. Typical connector styles include the ST, SC, FC, and SFF, to name a few.

Modulation Techniques Modulation encodes or converts an analog signal into binary code, for transmission across a channel to a demodulator which decodes the data.

You are probably already aware of a device that performs these functions, the Modem, a common device used for dial-up internet service, modulates or codes your signal for transmission over standard telephone lines and demodulates any received signal. The rate (speed) of modulation is a factor in determining the bandwidth or throughput of a transmission channel. Lasers have higher modulation rates and therefore greater bandwidths and capacity than do LED light sources.

There are 3 common modulation techniques: amplitude modulation , frequency modulation , and phase modulation.

As a comparison, amplitude modulation (AM) is commonly used for transmitting information via a radio carrier wave. AM varies the strength of the transmitted signal in relation to the information being sent.

For example, changes in signal strength may be used to specify the sounds to be reproduced by a loudspeaker.

Contrast this with frequency modulation, in which the frequency is varied, and phase modulation, in which the phase is varied.

These are ways of packaging the coded bits represented as the familiar “0” and “1” in pulse code modulation.

Link Factors

The designer of any fiber optic link must consider some key factors before construction to ensure proper function. Fiber wavelength , fiber bandwidth , and fiber attenuation are all limiting factors in link design.

It is also important that the installer understand these factors and the relationship between them as it pertains to the physical link or segment.

These key considerations, limiting link or segment performance, can be simply addressed with 4 key questions;

How much, how far, how fast and how much will it cost?

How much? This is an applications question. Which applications does the client want to run? Does the client want to run voice and data; CCTV; CATV; HDTV; and medical imaging applications? We tend to want everything but not necessarily need everything!

How far? Consider how far the signal must be sent. In commercial buildings is it a 100 meter closet link to the desktop, or a 2000 meter backbone on a campus? How about outside plant segments between central offices within a city, or city to city? What is the distance is required 10Km, 100Km?

How Fast? What is the bit rate or transmission speed of your network protocol? Is 10mb/s Ethernet, a gigabit, 10 gigabit, 100 gigabit or more required?

Multimode fiber, used in local area networks or LANs, is limited in both bandwidth and distance while single-mode fiber, used in wide area networks or WANs, is almost unlimited in bandwidth and distance.

Telephone Telephone companies helped fund and drive research into fiber optic networks. They needed higher capacity between more and more central office switches to support the growing needs of more telephone and data traffic. Originally all systems were point-to-point , but when synchronous optical networking (SONET) was introduced, the point-to-point protocol topology was modified to support the SONET ring architecture.

Data Communications In the mid-80s, we began to see fiber optics becoming part of data communication standards. Ethernet protocol, which is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3 standard, was first to incorporate both multimode and single-mode fiber and the ST connector type as part of the physical layer specifications.

The first fiber optic standard for networking was Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI). FDDI was a dual counter rotating ring network topology that was similar to Token Ring (IEEE 802.5) but was of higher speed and more reliable. It used both types of fiber and introduced the first dual position fixed connector so that each transmit and receive port was simultaneously connected or disconnected.

Security Today we see more and more cameras used in security applications. The requirement for these units to be placed further from the monitoring site requires the use of fiber optic technologies.

Traffic cameras are a major part of most intelligent transportation systems (ITS). They are especially valuable in tunnels, where safety equipment can be activated remotely based upon information provided by the cameras and other sensors. On surface roads, they are typically mounted on high poles or masts, sometimes along with street lights. On arterial roads, they are often mounted on traffic light poles at intersections, where problems are most likely to occur.

Digital video recorders (DVR) can be mounted further away and be protected with higher security and backup power due to the increased quality and distances offered by fiber optics. High security compounds are being protected by smart-fences that communicate via a monitoring site. An alarm will sound if a breach is being attempted.

Manufacturing A fiber optic communications cable does not need to carry any electrical current. It is possible to construct completely non-metallic cables so that full electrical isolation can be achieved, particularly important in the electrical industry. There are no risks of short circuits generating sparks which may ignite explosive gases, etc. Non-metallic cables are not prone to lightning strikes in exposed areas.

All these intrinsically safe characteristics have led to the widespread use of fiber optics in hazardous environments such as oil refineries, chemical works, coal mines, etc. When compared to copper communications cables, there is less use of energy resources in manufacturing, transporting, and installing fiber optic cables because of the lightweight, compact nature of optical fibers.

Medical

Not only do surgical and inspection instruments use fiber optic technology, but also medical imaging requires high bandwidth transmission to transmit detailed images.

Tactical The tremendous weight difference between fiber and copper has made it advantageous to upgrade aircraft with fiber which allows for additional payload.

Broadcasting

Transmission of video signals and digital data over conventional copper cables cannot yet comply with constantly growing requirements. This mostly is caused by signal quality enhancement as well as greater distances. The problem is that the resistance of coaxial cables and twisted pairs limits the distance which the signals can be transferred. An inexpensive solution to the problem is fiber optics.

Optical fiber has a much wider bandwidth and far less loss than coaxial cable. This allows transferring images with high resolution over greater distances without use of amplifiers or repeaters. And since the signal is a beam of light instead of electric current, the system becomes fully secured from any kind of electric interference including neighboring conductors or high voltage power lines.

Tensile Strength Optical fiber has a high tensile strength. Tensile strength is the amount of stress from pulling that it can handle before it breaks. Optical fiber has a tensile strength greater than steel. Tensile strength is important as it affects the way fiber must be handled.

The cladding provides much of the fiber’s tensile strength. Once the cladding is scratched or cracked the tensile strength is gone at that location. Bending can cause this cracking especially if the bending takes place while the fiber is under tension, as during cable pulls, and this cracking will decrease the fibers tensile strength.

Negligible Electromagnetic Interference (EMI)

Copper can act as an antenna picking up radio frequency interference and electromagnetic interference (EMI) from generators, motors, and other electrical sources.

Optical fiber or glass acts as an excellent dielectric and won’t pick up these signals, resulting in noise-free transmissions. Fiber is considered to be immune to EMI.

As a result of noise immunity, fiber routinely provides high quality transmissions with bit error rates (BERs) much better or lower than copper or microwave.

Low Loss and Distance

Fiber has very little loss, therefore it can carry a signal farther, up to 200km without amplification.

Attenuation, or loss, in coaxial and twisted pair copper cable increases as the frequency increases.

A telephony DS1 (Digital Service) signal at 1.544Mbs can travel approximately 6000 feet over copper before it has to be regenerated, a DS3 signal utilizing coaxial cable at 44.736Mbs will only travel 900 feet before it has to be regenerated.

However, in fiber optics the attenuation remains constant over a wide range of frequencies, or wavelengths. A typical optical signal utilizing a 1550 nm wavelength can travel over 55 miles before regeneration. In some cases greater distances, up to 120 miles, can easily be obtained.

Lack of Cross-talk between Parallel Fibers

In conventional communication circuits, channels will bleed over into one another resulting in other calls being heard in the background. This bleed over can occur on copper pairs when water is introduced into the cable or splice. The water acts as a conduit and causes increased induction to occur between adjacent copper pairs. This is commonly referred to as cross-talk on a telephone line. In the case of fiber, water won’t cause the light to bleed over as signal induction can’t occur.

Extremely Wide Bandwidth

Fiber has substantially more bandwidth than copper per strand. Today, fiber has a bandwidth capability in excess of 10 GHz (129,024 DS0’s @ 64Kbps). In an ideal situation utilizing dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), 128 - 40 GHz channels can be transmitted simultaneously on one fiber.

Greater Security - Difficult to Tap Into

The light in the optical fiber does not radiate outside the cable like electrical signals do over copper cables. Therefore, the only way to eavesdrop or to tap a fiber is to physically couple the light from the fiber. Bending the fiber and forcing some of the light out of the cable can accomplish this also. So, fiber can be tapped but it is considered difficult to do so. Security software and equipment can monitor the fiber and is capable of detecting losses occurred from unauthorized taps.

High Quality Transmission

As a result of noise immunity, fiber routinely provides communication quality orders much better than copper or microwave. The general standard for fiber transmission is a 10-9^ (1 error out of 1 billion bits) minimum bit error rate (BER) with 10-11^ or better as the norm. This is in comparison to 10-5^ to 10-7^ for copper or microwave.

Disadvantages of Fiber Optics

The use of optical fibers is perceived to have several disadvantages when compared to the copper alternatives. Installers must be knowledgeable of fiber optic theory, design, installation, and systems.

Fiber Fundamentals (Measurements)

Let’s start with discussing some fiber fundamentals.

This section focuses on specific physical measurements, data bit rate measurements, the electromagnetic spectrum and the wavelengths that are used within the industry today.

Common Units of Measure The foundation of fiber optic measurements came out of a worldwide research effort by scientists and engineers. Because of its international development, fiber optic measurements were given in metric units. To this day fiber optic measurements still use the metric system.

However, the exception is that certain North American manufacturers offer their cabling products with jacket markings in feet rather than meters. This helps prevent confusion in markets unfamiliar to metric measurements.

The metric terms an installer must be familiar with are:

 Micron (μm) = a millionth of a meter - Used to measure the diameter (ϴ) of a fiber.

 Nanometer (nm) = a billionth of a meter - Used to measure wavelengths (λ).

Here is a list of standard to metric conversions as used in fiber optics:

1 meter (m) =

 39.37 inches (in.)

1 millimeter (mm) =

 One thousandth (1/1,000) of a meter

1 micron (μm) =

 One millionth (1/1,000,000) of a meter

 One thousandth (1/1,000) of a millimeter

1 nanometer (nm) =

 One billionth (1/ 1,000,000,000) of a meter

Data Measurements

Bit vs. Baud

Baud is the number of signal level transitions per second. It is commonly confused with bits per second. The baud rate does not necessarily transmit an equal number of bits per second. In some encoding schemes, baud will be equal to bits per second, but in others it will not.

For example , a signal with four voltage levels may be used to transmit 2 bits of information for every baud. These terms are often used synonymously, but it is important to note that they are different.

It wasn’t long ago that Bytes and Kilobytes were sufficient in transmitting our digital data, but as application and files sizes have increased our terminology has evolved. Consider the fact we are downloading movies on demand. Would you rather wait two hours for a movie to download or ten minutes? This drives the need for increased bandwidth. This table has a list of data rates and bit sizes commonly used in communications today.

The term "bps" specifies network bandwidth in bits per second. The term "Bps" specifies network bandwidth in bytes per second.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is the range of all types of EM radiation. Radiation energy spreads out as it is transmitted over distance. Visible light is one type of electromagnetic radiation and radio waves are another. The other types of EM radiation that make up the electromagnetic spectrum are microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays.

Light travels in rays, and is made up of photons that have energy, light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum and visible light is made up of 320 trillion different colors. Our eyes are detectors that can operate between 400 and 700 nanometers.