Data Center
Complete Data Center Coverage
Challenges
Capacity
With bandwidth needs accelerating exponentially, data centers require fiber and connectivity systems that can expand seamlessly to support higher speeds and denser configurations.
Power Consumption
As bandwidth and compute demands rise, energy use escalates. Data centers need connectivity solutions that minimize power consumption per gigabit to maintain performance while keeping energy use under control.
Interference
From the metal racking to the equipment itself, inside a data center is full of physical barriers to complete coverage. Data centers need a connectivity solution that is able to deliver full site coverage without connectivity blackspots caused by existing structures and equipment.
High-Density Infrastructure
With increasing fiber counts and limited rack space, data centers face the challenge of managing complex, high-density environments where every connection must be easily managed and maintained.
Mission-Critical
Robust connectivity is the backbone of data center businesses, and ensuring constant connectivity for their customer is business-critical. However, it is also essential to have complete mission-critical coverage across the data center site to meet safety regulations and ensure the safety of those working there.
Fire Safety
The main driver for data center managers to upgrade connectivity solutions is a need for full site coverage that will continue to operate in the event of a fire. Failure to ensure this risks contravening fire safety regulations.
System design
Data centers are densely packed spaces making it challenging to determine how much equipment is needed and the best location for total wireless coverage. Data center operators need a partner that understands how to design and deploy all aspects of a wireless system, including cable routing and antenna location.
Indutry Trends
True Mission Critical
To ensure site safety, warehouses must have mission-critical coverage across the entire site. Wireless connectivity solutions that meet regulatory requirements and keep staff safe:
- Extend across every area of the site to give complete coverage in an emergency.
- Meet the highest global standards for low smoke, flame, and fire retardance.
- Support all communications technologies and frequencies up to 6 GHz.
Overcoming physical barriers
One of the biggest challenges for mission-critical connectivity in a data center setting is the interference caused by a high concentration of racking to store equipment. Both the equipment and its housing act as a physical barrier to RF. There needs to be a concerted effort to overcome these issues to install complete coverage.
- RADIAFLEX offers contoured coverage that works around physical barriers to wireless.
- RFS offers consultation services to ensure installations fully meet customer requirements.
- RFS’s RF expertise allows us to advise on the best solutions for difficult environments.
Managing the Data Explosion
As global data volumes grow exponentially, data centers are under pressure to handle more bandwidth, faster speeds, and increasingly complex workloads. Meeting this demand requires infrastructure built for scalability, flexibility, and high-performance connectivity.
- Scale seamlessly to handle exponential growth in data traffic and bandwidth demand.
- Support next-generation speeds from 100G to 1.6T across evolving architectures.
- Ensure low latency and high reliability for data-intensive, AI-driven applications.
Power-Optimized Connectivity
As data rates accelerate, power consumption per gigabit becomes a key performance factor for modern data centers. Every increase in capacity places greater demand on network infrastructure, making efficiency at an infrastructure level essential.
- Advanced solutions minimize power consumption per gigabit across data center links.
- Maintain high data throughput and reliability without increasing power load.
- RFS works as a partner to find the most efficient solutions for every data center deployment
Low-Energy Mission Critical
Energy consumption is a major concern for data center operators with sustainability concerns making it essential to explore all possible avenues to save energy.
- Radiating cable, which allows contoured coverage, is a passive, not active, system.
- Passive infrastructure is low energy, reducing the carbon cost of mission-critical.
- Passive equipment produces no heat allowing widespread coverage with no need for cooling.
RFS Solutions
Passive RF Components
RFS passive RF components operate in all frequency bands from 555 MHz to 6 GHz and provide optimal passive intermodulation (PIM) performance to reduce interference and support the highest throughput levels end-to-end. Our comprehensive portfolio includes all components required for an end-to-end, 5G-ready distributed antennas system, including: combiners, hybrid combiners and couplers, directional couplers, diplexers and triplexers, power splitters, loads and attenuators.
RADIAFLEX® Radiating Cables
RFS RADIAFLEX is the industry’s most advanced portfolio of 5G-ready radiating cables for contoured wireless coverage in buildings and underground. RADIAFLEX cables support all services up to 6 GHz with high performance, making them ideal for multiband, multi-operator applications in any indoor environment. With a variety of different bending radii, performance levels and outer conductor types to choose from, there’s a RADIAFLEX radiating cable for even the most challenging coverage requirements.
RADIAFLEX® Radiating Waveguide
The RFS RADIAFLEX radiating waveguide is a distributed antenna system for tunnels, mines, large building complexes and other challenging locations. The broadband solution simultaneously supports multiple one-way and two-way communications systems, so a single waveguide can be used for all applications. A specialized manufacturing and longitudinal seam welding process developed by RFS ensures optimal electrical performance and good bending properties.
Connectors and Accessories
RFS OMNI FIT™ Premium and OMNI FIT Standard connectors are well-known for their precision-engineered performance, ease of installation and long life in the field. They can be used with copper and aluminum cables, and are the perfect complement to our CELLFLEX and CELLFLEX Lite coaxial cables. The connectors support all frequencies up to 6 GHz, making them ideal for smooth evolution to 5G globally. A comprehensive range of adapters, grounding kits, hangers, clamps and tools complete the portfolio.
HYBRIFLEX® Solutions for Buildings and Campuses
RFS HYBRIFLEX solutions for building and campuses make it fast and easy to bring fiber and power to distributed antenna system (DAS), distributed radio system (DRS) and small cells deployments in these environments. The solutions target requirements for high-density, plug-and-play fiber, mission-critical connectivity and indoor/outdoor cross-campus connectivity. They support all wired and wireless technologies and frequencies and are optimized for high-bandwidth Radio over Fiber (RoF) applications.
CPR-Compliant Radiating and Coaxial Cables
RFS CPR-compliant radiating and coaxial cables feature a specially developed jacket that allows them to achieve best-in-class ratings for burning droplets (d0), low smoke emission (s1) and corrosivity (a1), the most important criteria for fire safety in cables that are installed indoors and underground. All RFS CPR-compliant cables are also designated as low-smoke, zero-halogen (LSZH) and meet International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards for flame spread, smoke acidity and low smoke emission.
Advanced Fiber Solutions for Data Centers
Driven in large part by the AI boom, data center demand continues to grow exponentially, creating major challenges in managing capacity, power consumption, and infrastructure density. From next-generation transceivers and Active Optical Cables to Hollow Core Fiber; explore a selection of our latest technologies specifically tackling the key challenges facing data centers. See how RFS is supporting customers with the expertise and technologies to support tomorrow’s data centers.
Passive DAS
RFS’ end-to-end DAS portfolio includes the company’s world-renowned CELLFLEX® coax cables, RADIAFLEX® radiating cables and plenum-rated cables, as well as broadband and ultra-broadband antennas, and high-performance components. All solution elements are designed and proven to work seamlessly together to simplify and accelerate deployments in buildings and tunnels.
References
Data Center challenges
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The biggest challenge for data center managers when delivering mission-critical solutions is the physical barriers to connectivity. Metal racking and key data center equipment all negatively impact signal propagation, meaning a traditional in-building DAS solution using point antennas is not fit for purpose. RADIAFLEX radiating cable is ideal for overcoming the challenges faced by data center customers needing to install mission-critical connectivity across their entire sites.
Resources
Advanced Fiber and Connectivity Solutions for Data Centers
Brochure
Indoor Connectivity - RF / Fiber / Hybrid - Solutions for Buildings and Tunnels
Brochure
RADIAFLEX® Radiating Cable Selection Guide
Brochure
A communications backbone: The strengths of passive infrastructure
Blog
Building a switch-free architecture for better enterprise connectivity
Blog
Delivering ‘true’ mission critical services
Blog
Passive DAS Selection Guide
Brochure
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