INTELLIGENT
CABLING
How will smart
buildings help solve
today and tomorrow’s
challenges?
Arafat Yousef, Managing Director – Middle East and Africa, Nexans
Cabling Solutions, says to make a building ‘smart’ an integrated
approach to structured cabling and devices is required.
Arafat Yousef, Managing Director – Middle East
and Africa, Nexans Cabling Solutions
PPROVIDING A FOUNDATION
WITH FTTO
Which benefits can Intelligent
Buildings bring?
Fast and reliable Internet connections and
optimised controlling heating, ventilation,
aircon and lighting make an important
contribution to employee wellbeing and
happiness. Smart buildings help ensure
occupants’ safety with connected alarm
systems and IP cameras.
Furthermore, Power over Ethernet
allows the introduction of smart LED lighting
powered over the network connection.
Current LED systems can save up to 80%
energy compared to legacy lighting systems.
Introducing sensors makes lighting and
space usage even more efficient.
Smart lighting with built-in occupancy
and ambient light sensors that can change
the light over the course of the day also
help increase employee productivity.
Intelligent Buildings can also reduce energy
and water consumption.
The convergence of networks that comes
with creating intelligent building networks
means IT and facilities management teams
need to work together in entirely new
ways. Rethinking basic infrastructure is
essential. What’s more, historically, field
bus components and IT have always been
regarded as two completely separate things.
However, when making a building ‘smart’,
it is vital that all platforms and components
can communicate in a unified manner and
act as an integrated whole. That requires
a common language and an integrated
approach to structured cabling and devices.
By introducing a cross-platform, fully
integrated ‘central nervous system’ in
a building, or even between buildings,
investment and operational costs can
be reduced and implementation and
maintenance can be simplified.
Why choose FTTO?
This solution combines the benefits of both
copper and fibre to provide a future-proof
solution with high bandwidth and minimum
energy use. FTTO is especially suitable for
Intelligent Building environments as they
feature a high number of ports in large
buildings or across multiple buildings.
The solution not only supports standard
point-to-point topologies but also cascading
of systems. Design can be flexibly based on
project requirements. Redundancy can be
designed-in at the access level in a costeffective
way by linking each network path.
In a traditional LAN design, this would be
extremely costly, but FTTO can provide
significant cost benefits in situations
where large areas need to be covered or
building usage requirements impose specific
restrictions. With no energy-hungry floor
distributors and technical service rooms and
support for energy-saving features, FTTO
could be considered the most sustainable
solution in terms of CO 2
footprint, waste and
energy consumption.
Supporting growing demand for
Intelligent Buildings
FTTO combines passive fibre cabling and
active switches to provide Gigabit Ethernet
services from a central core switch to an FTTO
switch and from there to the end-user devices.
The excellent performance and simplicity
of the concept brings savings by reducing
complexity and enabling faster and easier
rollout, maintenance and expansion. The
scalability of the system allows you to
expand as you grow, ensuring expenditure is
always in line with current requirements.
FTTO eliminates the need for floor
distributors, separate fibre backbone,
active equipment, patch panels and racks,
as well as large volumes of horizontal
copper cabling. A significant advantage
in an environment where every square
metre counts. Increasing demand from the
market for more sustainable and lowcarbon
buildings will only serve to sustain
the demand for Intelligent Buildings in the
years to come and FTTO can play a key role
in meeting that demand and facilitating
the energy saving, efficiency-enhancing
innovations of today and tomorrow. •
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
INTELLIGENT
TECH CHANNELS Issue 30 39