Fiber optic installations are divided into two main groups: indoor plant and outdoor plant. Indoor plant installations refer to those carried out inside buildings, houses, schools, hospitals, among others. Therefore, their distances are on the order of meters, multimode fiber is regularly used, and splices are not fusion-based. Outdoor plant includes fiber installations that are outside buildings, connections from telephone exchanges to users; most are on the order of kilometers and can be underground or aerial. In this post, we will talk about the elements you can find in an aerial installation, which is the installation that goes from pole to pole.
Aerial installation offers the great advantage of having an already existing infrastructure, meaning the poles are already in place, thanks to the possibility of using those already installed for the power line.
Some of the components to be used are:
Tension and suspension hardware: This includes all accessories for securing and providing tension to cables on poles. Take into account the area where the installation will be carried out to calculate the percentage of tension and suspension hardware that should be used.
Figure 1. Accessories
Figure 2. Suspension and tension hardware
Fiber optic cable: The use of ADSS, Figure 8, or dielectric cable is recommended. Each cable uses a specific type of hardware for installation.
Splice closures: designed to protect fiber optic fusion splices from environmental conditions.
Cable slack storage units: devices for storing excess cable.
Identification elements: To maintain better control over the cables or closures that are installed and especially to identify the company to which the installation belongs, roll-up labels or self-reflective labels are used for coding.
Cable installation accessories: For dielectric cables, a cable lasher is used to weave the fiber cable with a messenger wire to properly secure the cable to the pole and prevent it from sagging.
