The scope of the present invention relates to the installation of wiring for telecommunications networks in buildings. The identified solution is particularly suitable for making fiber optic cabling on buildings of various kinds; in particular, in cases where the excavation of tracks to house the lines on the walls is problematic.
Compared to conventional optical cables, the optical cable 100 according to the teachings of the present invention appears much more suitable to support the growing cabling needs that arise according to the more plausible evolutionary scenarios.
In summary, the present invention indicates a wiring technique that allows a laying even in the absence of prepared raceways, without determining an aesthetic impact. At the same time, the optical cable 100 can also be passed inside the normal raceways that are still present in many sections. Furthermore, the optical cable 100 according to the teachings of the present invention can easily separate single fibers from bundles containing many, so as to facilitate the creation of networks with very varied and intricate topologies, limiting as much as possible the number of joints.
These objectives can be reached by using a cable consisting of a strip-shaped cable, in which a variable number of telecommunication optical fibers are arranged side by side; and this strip-shaped cable is characterized in that said side-by-side optical fibers are comprised between two containment bands and are also immersed in a substance with lubricating properties.
Moreover, said two containment bands, in addition to having a protective and containment function, give resistance to traction, and the external surface of at least one of said two containment bands is adhesive.
In recent times, it has become increasingly evident the necessity to wire the buildings, in order to make telecommunication networks suitable to support the transmission of contents, even quite burdensome. This is a requirement strictly linked to the progressive, and increasingly pervasive, computerization of human activities; so that the wiring techniques of buildings do not have a very long history; therefore, they cannot be considered consolidated techniques, and innovations in the sector are desirable.
The first buildings which have been subjected by telecommunication cabling were the buildings used for working or teaching purposes. In these cases, since the passage of cables on external raceways is tolerable from an aesthetic point of view, the problem of preparing the necessary ducts has been frequently solved in a hasty manner. In many cases, moreover, the structure of these buildings requires the presence of false ceilings, or the heights of the rooms allow the creation of floating floors, therefore the laying of the wiring is significantly facilitated.
However, in residential environments, or in other environments where the aesthetic aspect cannot be neglected, the client demands that the wiring and the installations in general be as invisible as possible. Furthermore, the structure of the walls, ceilings and floors does not normally have features that facilitate a hidden passage of cables.
Also for this reason, “wireless” solutions, to support the communication needs present in these environments, have known a very significant development. In new buildings, the most far-sighted designers try to set up very pervasive infrastructures and cable ducts. However, even buildings of more recent construction can hardly fully satisfy the installation of telecommunications networks in step with the growing needs.
The future scenarios, in fact, foresee a very large increase in the number of objects, even in common use, which must be online or accessible with remote commands. Sensors of all kinds can be disseminated in any environment; all the installations necessary for the operation of a building will be characterized by new architectures, based on networks of various components (from switches, to light points, to domotics systems and, in general, the various components of all the building's systems, including plumbing, etc.).
Future scenarios are not deepened here. It is sufficient to observe that it is foreseeable that the techniques currently used and available will not be sufficient to support an increasingly pervasive communication requirement, characterized by the need to continuously add devices, that must be online, to the building network. It is expected that, even considering just a small room, there will be a network capable of involving tens of objects.
The techniques used today to support the communication needs present in a building are based on the presence of hidden diffused cable ducts, obtained through the arrangement of ducts on new buildings or through restructuring interventions; on the construction of walls with cavities, false ceilings or floating floors; as well as the massive use of “wireless” technologies.
However, it is not realistically possible to ensure, only by relying on an “a priori” predisposition strategy, the connection of all devices that over time must be able to be installed in a building. At the same time, it is not even acceptable to have to provide invasive interventions, such as the excavation of traces on the walls, with excessive frequency; nor “wireless” solutions (which in any case require power supply) can cover all the communication needs which, according to many accredited evolutionary scenarios, are expected in the near future.
Therefore, a real problem arises, linked to the wiring that is necessary to support the evolution towards ever more intelligent buildings.
It is therefore necessary to devise new wiring techniques that integrate with the existing infrastructures and, at the same time, allow for the installation, almost everywhere, and with maximum ease of installation, of objects that are connected to a telecommunications network.
Moreover, it is preferable to use the optical transmission technology. In fact, fiber optic cabling guarantees enormous capacities able to fully support the needs increases that can be expected even in the long term. Furthermore, fiber optic transmission technologies are now mature for their use also in the “consumer” market, as well as guaranteeing excellent immunity to disturbances.
The present invention proposes an optical wiring which has prominent installation advantages with respect to the prior art, of which the following patents are mentioned:
The main object of the present invention, therefore, is to indicate a solution for the optical wiring of a building. The indicated wiring must be easy to install and, in particular, it must be able to be installed without the need for invasive building works: it is therefore necessary that the indicated wiring technology does not necessarily require cable ducts, or ducts of various types, to house the laying of the cable. Furthermore, once the installation is completed, this wiring must be substantially invisible, regardless it is laid or not inside a raceway.
A further object of the present invention is to indicate a solution suitable for exploiting the possibility of being installed inside raceways in the event they are already prepared, but it must also be suitable to be installed in such a way as to continue its path even where the possible raceway used did not reach the desired points. The indicated wiring must in fact be suitable to reach, with maximum flexibility, any point on the walls on the ceilings, or on the floors of a building.
Moreover, a further object of the present invention is to allow the use of lines in which the cables can be installed having the least possible number of joints, avoiding, for example, a joint when switching from laying to inside to laying outside the duct, or when it is necessary to separate a transmission flow from a fiber bundle. This last requirement has to do with the ease and efficiency of installation, given that optical junctions are not as trivial as electrical junctions are.
These objectives can be reached by using a cable consisting of a strip of flattened shape, in which a variable number of telecommunication optical fibers are arranged side by side; and this strip-shaped cable is characterized in that said side-by-side optical fibers are comprised between two containment belts and are also immersed in a substance with lubricating properties.
Moreover, said two containment belts, in addition to having a protective and containment function, confer tensile strength and, typically, at least one of said two containment belts has its external surface adhesive.
The main advantage of the present invention consists in the fact that an optical wiring according to the teachings of the present invention satisfies all the main requirements for which it was conceived.
This invention also has further advantages, which will become more evident from the following description, from some examples of practical embodiments which illustrate further details, from the attached claims which form an integral part of the present description, and from the attached figures in which:
In all the proposed figures a simplified representation is offered, in which the proportions are not realistic. These are figures conceived essentially in order to highlight, each, some characteristic elements; therefore, many details, which do not concern the characteristics that we intend to describe, are omitted or represented in an approximate way.
Number 110 indicates the actual optical fibers, in
The representation of
With the number 130 two containment bands are then indicated; moreover, as shown in the figure, there is a space (which is intentionally wider than that of the actual embodiments, for reasons of explanatory clarity) between the bands 130 and the fibers 110. This space contains a lubricating substance indicated by the number 120. Said lubricating substance 120, typically, can be a gel, an oily substance, or simple paraffin, and has the main function of facilitating the flow of the fibers when the optical cable 100 is to be curved, or when a single fiber has to be partially unthreaded.
The presence of said lubricating substance 120, in which the individual optical fibers 110 are immersed, is of great importance since it allows to easily separate the individual fibers and to make them slide inside the cable 100. As will also be clarified with the help of
Finally, the view proposed in
Definitely, a valuable feature of the optical wiring 100 is that it can be made in a shape that makes it extremely thin, with a thickness of a few tenths of a millimeter. Such a thin shape allows it to be laid directly on the surface of a wall, without the need to dig a trace, as is instead necessary for the laying of a raceway suitable for housing the passage of cables.
To facilitate installation, the optical wiring 100 is made by gluing at least one of its surfaces. In this way, the strip is made to adhere to the wall in a simple and immediate way.
The application can take place directly on the finished wall or, preferably, by lightly scraping the wall along the laying path so that the thickness, although very small, of the wiring does not protrude. Finally, to make the installation invisible, just cover the cable with a thin layer of plaster or paint. In this regard, it can be observed how the technologies for painting the walls today offer a wide variety of solutions, some of which involve the use of substances that can, or must, be applied creating a certain thickness. All these solutions can be particularly suitable for covering and concealing a wiring according to the teachings of the present invention.
Generally, the optical cables 100 according to the invention have both faces adhesive-coated: in fact, it can be useful that also the outer face is adhesive. This, not only to make it easier to cover the cable even with very thin layers of covering substances (in fact many covering substances adhere better to adhesive surfaces), but also, and above all, because when the laying involves changes of direction, normally it changes the face which must adhere to the wall.
It is clear that after each bending, the side of the strip in contact with the laying wall changes, therefore it is advisable that both sides are adhesive-coated.
In a preferred implementation, in fact, both sides of the strip constituting an optical cable 100 are adhesive-coated, and covered by a thin protective film (as normally occurs to protect the adhesive surfaces) which is removed where it is necessary to stick somewhere or to adhere to some particular substance.
It is observed that the optical fibers have limitations on the curvature angle that is allowed for the transmission properties to be preserved. Therefore, the real fold cannot be performed with a “sharp” bending. This constraint on the fold imposes that, in correspondence with the changes of direction, the wiring 100 occupies a thickness significantly greater than twice the thickness of the laid wiring; this is because the two overlapping flaps cannot generally be crushed one on top of the other due to the bending, otherwise the fold would generate a “sharp” bending that would break the fibers.
However, this constraint can be easily managed without significantly compromising the advantages of the invention. In fact, it is enough to erode the laying wall more, but only for the points where the change of direction is made, so as to house the greater thickness.
Furthermore, this way of performing direction changes allows to manage the bending radius control with greater precision; in fact, all the individual fibers 110 that make up the optical wiring 100 are subject to the same bend (which can be controlled), which is not the case in cables where the individual fibers are bunched together.
Finally, the fact that individual fibers 110 are immersed in a lubricating substance, means that, in correspondence of bends, these are not subjected to torsion, i.e. another type of stress which is preferable to avoid in an optical fiber.
Therefore, even if only for the points of change of direction, the installation as shown in
It is noted that the operation of releasing the optical fibers 110 along the short trait 103, is an operation made particularly easy by the fact that the optical fibers 110 are kept separate thanks to the particular shape of the optical cable 100 (for example, they are not interlaced). In fact, it is particularly simple, using suitable tools, to cut accurately the containment bands, without risking to damage to the optical fibers 110.
Once the optical fibers 110 have been released in the trait 103, for a sufficient length, it is possible to lay the optical cable as a whole, maintaining strict adherence to the surfaces to which it is applied, making it perform almost all the paths which may be required in a generic pose.
In
Obviously, this kind of installation requires that the single fibers can be handled somehow independently, without being strictly enclosed in a single bunch: this is the main reason why, in correspondence with such changes of direction it is necessary to free the individual fibers, for a trait 103 of sufficient length, from the other elements which constitute the cable. Moreover, the presence of the lubricating substance 120 also allows, if it is necessary to adjust the length of the trait of free fibers, to let the individual fibers slide slightly off the part of the optical cable 100.
In general,
The optical cable 100 according to the invention, on the other hand, is suitable for any type of installation, maintaining its fundamental prerogative which is that of being suitable for adhering above the laying surface. Moreover, since it is extremely thin, it can subsequently be covered and made invisible by means of a covering finishing layer, such as, for example, a suitable painting.
The central zone of the strip which constitutes the optical cable 100, therefore, is arranged so that a fold can be easily made longitudinally. In
Taking advantage of the fact that the surface inside the angle 104, formed by the strip which constitutes the optical cable 100, when this is folded as explained, is adhesive, the optical cable 100 can remain permanently bent longitudinally and can be made more compact (no longer flat in the shape of a ribbon). In this new configuration it can easily be used as a normal cable, suitable to be passed inside traditional raceways.
Obviously, in the case of particularly wide optical cables, or with a greater number of fibers, this longitudinal folding operation can take place in more than one zone, with the aim of reaching a compact conformation suitable for being inserted in a raceway.
In a typical application, the optical cable 100 can be laid in its flattened shape for a more or less long distance, making it adhere to a wall, until it reaches a point (for example a box with switches) from which depart one or more raceways. From that point on, if necessary, the optical cable 100 can continue its laying inside a raceway, in its folded conformation as indicated in
The two laying methods:
From what has been said so far, it therefore clearly emerges that the optical cable 100, according to the teachings of the present invention, defines a real laying method for installing a cable for data transmission on optical fiber, between a generic point “A” and another generic point “B”, positioned on a wall or on the floor, or on the ceiling of an generic environment.
First, this laying method foresee the identification of the path between point “A” and point “B”. As will also be clear from the following, the choice of the path does not present particular constraints and, in the most general case, this path is partly defined by existing ducts or channels, which can be used for the installation of the optical cable 100, and in part runs along paths not predisposed for laying the optical cable 100.
In this generic case, the installation takes place in the following way.
Typically, thin layers of plaster or various types of materials used for painting. Finally, it is reiterated that this laying method does not require that the optical cable 100 be sectioned, between the point “A” and the point “B”, in correspondence with the points where the type of laying changes, from laying in the duct to laying in adherence. Indeed, since typically the path sections in conduits terminate on special termination boxes, the point of the optical cable 100 in which the conformation changes, from flat to longitudinally folded, can easily remain housed inside such termination boxes.
The just described invention can then be proposed in many other variants; among these, for example, the variant presented in
In the variant shown in
This variant represents a useful example to show how the strip composing the optical cable 100 can have various zones arranged for the longitudinal fold, and not only a central one, as indicated in
With respect to this latter need, to select one or more fibers 110 from the initial bouquet, it is observed that also the presence of the lubricating substance 120, in which the optical fibers 110 are immersed, further facilitates this operation.
Ultimately, compared to traditional optical cables, the optical cable 100 according to the teachings of the present invention, appears much more suitable to support the growing cabling needs that arise according to the more plausible evolutionary scenarios.
In summary, the present invention indicates a new technique that allows the laying of a wiring even in the absence of prepared raceways, without determining an aesthetic impact. At the same time, the optical cable 100 can also be passed inside the normal raceways that are still present in many sections. Furthermore, the optical cable 100 according to the teachings of the present invention can easily separate single fibers from bundles containing many, so as to facilitate the creation of networks with very varied and intricate topologies, limiting as much as possible the number of joints.
In general, then, the present invention lends itself to numerous variants while maintaining the claimed prerogatives. In fact, it can be developed in different sizes and including different amounts of optical fibers; and the invention itself can be carried out partially as some details described can be replaced by technically equivalent elements.
In particular, and as previously mentioned, the use of specific technologies and materials is not an essential part of the present invention. Therefore, if in the future the materials and adhesives sector were to make available new technologies, more advantageous than those mentioned in the preferred implementations, so as to implement the present invention more efficiently, further improvements could be made without thereby modifying the inventive nature and the principles that inspired the invention itself.
Other possible variants for the present invention may derive, in addition to the evolution of the technologies that constitute it, also from the evolution of the sector of optical components; so that the cables indicated in the invention could, for example, integrate components of varying complexity and also perform other functions, additional to the transmission function only.
Therefore, especially in the context of such evolutionary scenarios, the invention lends itself to incorporating and supporting further development and improvement efforts, capable of improving the performance of the system described. Therefore, many further developments can be made by the man skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the invention as it results from the present description and from the appended claims, which form an integral part of the present description; or, if these developments are not included in the present description, they can be the subject of further patent applications associated with the present invention, or dependent on it.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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102018000009039 | Oct 2018 | IT | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/IB2019/058258 | 9/28/2019 | WO | 00 |