Robotic Fiber Cross-Connect Switch

Cross-Connect Robot

Auto-reconfigure

Gantry speed 0.60 m/s

Min. enforced bend radius 20 mm

Color cables by loss

Idle — panel ready

Live Readout

Active links

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Free ports

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Avg. insertion loss

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Last switch time

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How it works

Large IT/telecom data centers use robotic fiber cross-connects (e.g. Telescent-style shuffles) instead of manual patching: an XY gantry robot rides a rail above a jack field, unplugs one end of an existing patch cord, carries it through a cable-management trough, and re-plugs it at a new port — reconfiguring circuits in minutes with zero touch and zero mis-patches.

Every re-route still has to respect the fiber's optical loss budget. This sim tracks the standard link-budget equation:

IL_total = 2 x IL_connector + alpha x L_km + IL_bend

IL_connector  ~ 0.35 dB   (typical mated-pair loss, x2 ends)
alpha         ~ 0.35 dB/km (single-mode fiber attenuation)
IL_bend(R)    = 0                       if R >= R_crit (30 mm)
              = k x (R_crit - R)^2      if R <  R_crit

The bend radius slider is the actual radius the robot is instructed to hold at every trough corner — dragging it left visibly tightens the cable's turns and the quadratic macrobend penalty above shows up immediately in the loss readout, exactly as pulling a real fiber too tight leaks light out of the cladding.

Reconfigure Random Link — the robot travels to one end of a random active cord, unplugs it, carries it across the trough to a free port, and re-seats it.
Auto-reconfigure — issues a new reconfigure request every few seconds, like a live churn workload.
Gantry speed — the rail/carriage travel rate, in simulated meters per second.
Color cables by loss — tints every cord green→amber→red by its own computed insertion loss.

Low loss Moderate loss High loss (tight bend)

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