Aerial optical cables characteristics related to fiber-optic communication line reliability

The quality of self-supporting optical cables depends on the compliance of the technology with the individual manufacturing operations and with the design solutions incorporated into them. One of the most important and hard to achieve parameters related to quality and reliability of self-supporting optical cable is the excess fiber length. The excess fiber length is defined by the difference between the optical fiber length in a loose tube of a cable and the length of the tube itself. Generally, the excess fiber length has to be a relatively small positive value that limits the load on the optical fiber caused by mechanical stress applied to a cable. However, it is important that the excess fiber length is small and evenly distributed along the cable length. In the paper it is shown that, with strict compliance with the manufacturing technology, the excess fiber length varies insignificantly both at the stage of loose tube manufacturing and during subsequent stages of self-supporting optical cable manufacturing.