BRIEFING GO!FOTON
other, the connectors “hide,” but when we need to switch the connections, they fan out just like the peacock’s feathers. Go!Foton’s PEACOC ® patented spreadable connectors are built in to our broad portfolio of fibre patch panels, including our new line of outside plant (OSP) compact enclosures, offering easy tool-less access to higher connection counts in less space. mechanics of optical ports and allowing them to expand and contract, PEACOC represents the first critical step in bridging innovations in classic component geometry with new topologies for fibre cable management. We see many exciting new developments on the horizon. PEACOC’s success points to a very bright future. By radically re-designing the
construction level and utilising PDs to detect even small variations in both the transmit and receive power of the light signal, we can enable network operators to determine the precise location and even the directionality of any attenuation or break. Our solution’s intelligent architecture also supports reporting on environmental conditions affecting the network, and incorporates a prediction suite that informs proactive planning, traffic management, and working protection. Again, notifications of developing fails are transmitted to the operator in real time.
flavours - will necessitate broad adoption of massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) antennas and the installation of millions of additional small radio sites that will need to be backhauled. Further, the centralised-RAN (C-RAN) distributed base station architecture which permits the sweeping proliferation of those antennas will consume vast amounts of fibre for fronthaul.
Where does Go!Foton fit in?
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As a leading network solutions provider, Go!Foton has identified two major innovation opportunities created by the relentless march
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How does Go!Foton help operators make more efficient use of space?
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of fibre densification: One is optimising the use of scarce real estate in the central office, outside plant, and data centre and the second is enabling intelligence at the physical levels of the network, Layer 1 and Layer 0.
Three or four years ago, we realised that one of the key implications of densification for carriers and data centres was that their available
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What keeps you awake at night?
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real estate didn’t necessarily scale with the accelerating growth in the number of connections they would have to maintain. To come up with a solution, we began by asking a question about geometry: how can we pack more connections into a physical object without changing its dimensions? We looked to nature for insight and found the peacock. If you see them with feathers retracted, you’d never guess what kind of mating show they can put on for peahens when they fan out! Why couldn’t we do the same thing for fibre connections? When the fibres are passing optical signals to each
My passion for innovation. I never stop dreaming about creating wonderful new realities to benefit the industry and all of civilisation!
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What is Layer 0? OSI only defines levels 1 through 7.
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That’s true. In the widely accepted OSI model, Layer 1 is indeed referred to as the physical layer and defined by all of the infrastructure
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that the network comprises. In our modified stack, we distinguish between Layer 1---the actual signal and supporting hardware, and Layer 0---the medium (fibre cabling) which carries the signal. As an analogy, think of a freight train as Layer 1 infrastructure and the track as Layer 0. Or perhaps a container ship and the ocean.
What is “intelligence” in this context?
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In the case of the ship, it might be a satellite weather service that notifies the crew whenever dangerous conditions are
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developing. For a telecommunications network, it’s the ability to monitor all of the actual fibre connections and alert the network operator to any exceptions as soon as they occur.
Like warning the ship’s captain about unusual ocean wave activity on the current shipping route. Yes, although instead of using barometric sensors, we employ the photodiode technology first explained by Einstein in his 1905
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Nobel Prize-winning paper to build smart devices and systems that provide visibility throughout the network. By employing port-engagement sensing at the Layer 0
PEACOC ® rack with spreadable connectors
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ISSUE 20 | Q1 2020
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