Shipboard Cabling using Rugged Wavelength Division Multiplexing

Escalating requirements for military shipboard communications systems are straining existing cabling installations which are not capable of supporting new and higher speed signals. Many existing systems require extensive copper cabling which is heavy, bulky, expensive and unreliable. Newer systems require dedicated fiber-optic cabling with jacketing systems evolved from the field-proven designs utilized for copper cables. What is needed is a cable aggregation solution to replace this mélange of cable and signal types to reduce maintenance and installation costs, improve reliability, and provide a more robust communication infrastructure that is lightweight and immune to EMI interference.LightCables is a ruggedized terminal addressing the needs of both legacy (copper) and modern (copper/fiber) cabling systems. LightCables is built on the core technology of Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM). Multiple analog or digital electrical signals are modulated onto different optical carriers and combined onto a single light-weight fiber-optic cable pair. This enables the LightCables system to provide dramatic communication capacity on a single fiber-optic cable pair and to dramatically reduce the amount of shipboard copper cabling