Optical transceiver (optical module) is an indispensable photoelectric conversion device for modern optical fiber communication. With the increasing coverage of the network and increasing communication capacity, the improvement of communication links has become an inevitable development. UnitekFiber will introduce what is an optical transceiver and what are the main parameters of optical transceiver?
What is an optical transceiver?
An optical transceiver is a device for photoelectric conversion which usually consists of a receiver and a transmitter. The transmitting end converts the electrical signal into an optical signal, and after transmitting through the optical fiber, the receiving end converts the optical signal into an electrical signal.
The optical transceiver in the industry refers to a hot-swappable small packaged optical module, which is used on a device port and can be hot-swapped during operation. It is mainly used to convert electrical signals into optical signals with devices (generally refers to switches or router equipment). At the same time, it can receive optical signals emitted by an external optical fiber and convert them into electrical signals.
Optical Transceiver Package Form
The size of the optical transceiver is determined by the package form usually called form factor, and this package is stipulated by various multi-source agreement (MSA) organizations. There were many types of early device interfaces. Each device manufacturer can only use its own specific optical transceiver, which cannot be used in the industry. Therefore, some industry leaders have established a group to discuss the use of the same interface and the same size of optical modules between equipment vendors, this group is MSA.
With the development of technology, the size of optical transceivers is getting smaller and smaller, and the data capacity transmitted in a unit time is getting larger and larger. As a result, new MSAs have continued to appear from the early SFP MSA, XFP MSA to the current QSFP MSA, QSFP-DD MSA, CWDM4 MSA, etc., which not only define the external dimensions of optical transceiver, but also parameter.
The SFP package series includes SFP, SFP +, SFP28, and SFP56 according to different speeds. There may be SFP112 in the future, the rate is getting higher and higher, but the size is the same. QSFP series are QSFP +, QSFP28, QSFP56, and QSFP112 may be available in the future. CFP series are CFP, CFP2, CFP4, CFP8. The CXP series is available in CXP and CXP2.
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