Fiber optic transceiver is also called fiber optic transmitter and receiver. It is composed by optoelectronic devices, the functional circuit and the optica interface. the optoelectronic device includes a transmitter and receiver.
Fiber Optic Transmitters: LEDs, fabry-perot (FP) lasers, distributed feedback (DFB) lasers and vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) are the 4 types of source for the transmitters that can convert the electrical signals into optical signals. They are al tiny semiconductor chips. Fiber Optic Receivers: The receivers use semiconductor detectors (photodiodes or photodetectors) to
convert optical signals to electrical signals. Silicon photodiodes are used for short wavelength links (650 for POF and 850 for glass MM fiber). Long wavelength systems usually use InGaAs (indium gallium arsenide) detectors as they have lower noise than germanium which allows for more sensitive receivers. Very high speed systems sometimes use avalanche photodiodes (APDs) that are biased at high voltage to create gain in the photodiode.
The role of fiber optic transceiver can be simply concluded: Fiber transceiver is a photoelectric conversion device that converting electrical signal into an optical signal at the transmission side, after the transmission on the fiber optics, the optical signals are transmitted into electrical signals at the receiving side.
In the traditional network, the network cables or coaxial cables are usually used, but their communication bandwidth and signal quality they provide can no longer meet the growing need of customers. While the era of fiber optic network makes the optical switches, SDH equipment, fiber converters, fiber optic multiplexers, and more related fiber optic equipment developed rapidly. In
the works process of these fiber optic network equipments, the fiber optic transceiver modules are needed to convert the electrical signals via the laser driver to optical ones, and then transmit
the optical signals trough the optical fibers for a long distance, when the signals arrive at the receiving end, it then be converted into an electrical signals through the fiber optic receiver ((Pin-Tia or APD).
The following list the regular equipments that the fiber transceivers may used for:
Fiber Optic Multiplexer: Common fiber optic multiplexers use 1 x 9 package fiber optic module, some HD multiplexers would use SFP optical modules.
Fiber Optic Converters: 1 x 9 transceiver modules.
Fiber optic network card: 1 x 9, SFP or SFP+ optical modules.
Fiber-optic high-speed ball machine: SFP optical module
The base station: XFP, SFP optical module.
The above is the analysis of several devices using the optical modules. It can be seen that 1 x 9 and SFP optical modules are the most commonly used, the difference between them is that:
1 * 9 optical module are welded on the device, while SFP transceiver is hot-swappable.
There are uniform standards for the design and production of fiber optic transceivers. The case of the basic specifications, the optical modules from the major manufacturers such as Huawei, Cisco, Juniper, FiberStore, etc. In addition, the compatibility issues that we often talk about refers to the optical modules are compatible use for communications equipment of different manufacturers, for example, the optical module from FiberStore can be totally compatible with Cisco routers or switches. Because the fiber modules are written with the Cisco series switches compatible codes during the production to be work normally with Cisco equipments.
