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Let’s now see how to connect one to the other.

First, we need to open the cover of the RFoF connectors. In order to open the cover of the adapter unit, you just have to pull it out. You put your finger and pull it a bit firmly, and it is going to pop out. The reason it’s firm, is because it has an outdoor seal.

Now we will see how to open the radial cover on the optical cable. As you can see, this is made of 3 components the 3 parts: the bottom, the body, and the cover. This is a compression connector, so what you need to do is like you see under the arrow over here, you need to push down both the body and the cover, and hold the body with your fingers. At the same time, pull out the cover. Now you see the fiber cables exposed over here.

Next, we need to connect those two to each other and in order to do this, you see that there are reel markings over here – and you see, that there are reel markings over here. You need to align them so that they can go through. If you cannot see it, and if you try to push in another way, as you can see, it is not going through. The best way is to wiggle a little bit, and it goes by itself. Let’s try again. If I try it the other way, it does not go out, it does not go in. If it is this way, it does go out/in. However, if everything is lined up, it easily goes in. And then you can lock.

So now, we have realized a secure connection between the cable and the outdoor enclosure. Thanks for watching.

The rack mountable enclosure that you see here, accommodates up to four modules. Each module can be a transmit or receive module. In the particular rack mounting unit you see that it  has 4 Rx modules. This is a typical deployment where the receiver modules are housed indoors at the data center, whereas the transmit modules are housed in a shelter by the antenna. As you can see, all the units are powered up, and the red blinking LEDs indicate that there is no optical signal coming in to them.

Once we connect the Tx signal into the Rx unit (as you can see), now the Tx unit over here provides the optical signal and the light on the Rx unit turns green, indicating that the power is good. The rack multiple enclosure enables hot swapping of the modules. If one module is malfunctioning, you don’t need to replace the whole system; you can easily take out the defective module and return it to RFOptic provided it’s still under warranty. This rather easy to do – we just unscrew the spring screws over here and we can take out the housing.

As you can see, the data cable and the power cables are connected to the side. You slide the unit out, and you replace it with the new unit. Then you push it back in and screw the screws back in place. As you can see, while I have replaced the unit over here, I did not have to power down the whole system. All the three other modules were still working. There are other advantages using the rack mounting enclosure: It is a slim design, 1U in height.

All four units regardless if they are transmit or receive units are powered by the same AC input. There is a power distribution unit inside, and most importantly, all four units are controlled from the same user interface. There is a USB cable connecting the laptop to the back of the unit and through a distribution hub within the rack mounting enclosure all four units are connected to my user interface. As you can see, there are four units over here and four tabs here.

With the serial numbers, I can switch between each of them and see the status and do even some adjustments. So if I fit the optical power again to the unit (as we’ve done before) the light turns green. And on the control unit over here the light was in blue transitional state, now it turned green. So it mimics the LED that is on the unit. There are quite a few things you can control from the user interface. You can change the attenuation level, amplification level of the systems, but those will be covered in our next session.

Thank you for watching!

As you can see, they all have the same small form factor.Now let’s see all the components that make up an RFoF set.

Each set is made of 2 Tx and Rx modules, 2 AC/DC adapters, fiber patch cable, 2 USB cables, and a USB drive. The T-module is used to convert radio frequency signals (that are input) to converter, to optical signal. The Rx module at the far end, is used to take in the fiber signal, optical signals, and output the RF signals. The patch cable is provided so that the user can test the units before a field deployment in their labs. The 3 USB cables are provided so that the user can simultaneously connect to both of the units from the data connectors. The user interface allows the capability to connect to both of the devices at the same time. Through the user interface, the user can set up modify the S21 system gain, the p1dB gain, the P1dB compression point, as well as few other parameters.