What is OM5 Fibre Patchcord?
OM5 fibre, known as Wideband Multimode Fibre Patchcord (WBMMF), is a laser-optimised multimode fibre (MMF) with bandwidth characteristics specified for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). This new approach to fibre classification is designed to support a wide range of 'short' wavelengths between 850nm and 950nm, which when aggregated are suitable for high bandwidth applications. OM3 and OM4 are designed to support a single wavelength of 850nm.
Features of OM5 multimode fibre
1. Fewer fibres for higher bandwidth applications
OM5 fibre optic patch cord's operating wavelength is 850/1300nm, and can support at least four wavelengths, OM3 and OM4's usual operating wavelength is 850nm and 1300nm. that is to say, traditional OM1, OM2, OM3, OM4 multimode optical fibre has only one channel, while OM5 has four channels, the transmission capacity increased by four times. Combining short-wave wavelength-division multiplexing (SWDM) and parallel transmission technology, OM5 only needs 8 cores of broadband multimode fibre (WBMMF) to support 200/400G Ethernet applications, greatly reducing the number of fibre optic cores, and to a large extent, reducing the cost of network cabling.
2. Longer Transmission Distance
The transmission distance of OM5 fibre is longer than that of OM3 and OM4. OM4 fibre is designed to support at least 100m length with 100G-SWDM4 transceivers. But OM5 fibre can support up to 150m length with the same transceiver.
3. Lower fibre loss
OM5 broadband multimode fibre optic cable attenuation from the previous OM3, OM4 cable 3.5 dB / km down to 3.0 dB / km, in addition to increasing the bandwidth requirements on the 953nm wavelength.
OM5 has the same fibre size as OM3 and OM4, which means that it is fully compatible with OM3 and OM4, and does not need to be changed if OM5 is to be used in existing cabling applications. OM5 fibre is more scalable and flexible, and is able to support higher-speed network transmissions with fewer multi-mode fibre cores, at a much lower cost and power consumption than single-mode fibre, and therefore will be widely used in the future for 100G/400G/1T ultra-large scale networks. Therefore, it will be widely used in 100G/400G/1T ultra-large data centres in the future.