Hospital all-optical network construction experience and suggestions

With the development trend of interconnection of everything in smart hospitals, the connectivity of application scenarios such as hospital data centers, outpatient consultation areas, nursing wards, clean surgery departments, clinical testing centers, and medical imaging centers will grow exponentially. All-optical network will promote the deployment of fiber optic network coverage to further extend to every scene in the hospital, from fiber to the campus, to wards and consultation rooms, to office desks, to medical equipment, the planning and design of communication network construction is a key component in the construction of hospital infrastructure.

Overview of network architecture and application status of medical institutions

The traditional hospital weakness network is multiple subnets working in parallel, such as voice, data, video surveillance, security and WiFi, etc. Due to historical and technical reasons each subnet is built and maintained separately, resulting in high construction cost and difficult operation and maintenance. At the same time, each hospital expansion in a multi-service subnet environment involves the expansion of each subsystem network. This brings great challenges to the overall operation and maintenance and construction, and brings great pressure to the hospital. The hospital urgently needs an integrator to provide a network system that can realize all services, so that the overall network can be expanded effectively and at low cost, and at the same time can effectively reduce the operation and maintenance work.

Hospital demand and challenges for network applications

There are many information systems in hospitals, including hospital information system (HIS), electronic medical record system (EMR), medical image archiving and communication system (PACS), laboratory information management system (LIS) and other information technology applications, and hospital information technology has developed into a data-oriented stage, which requires data interconnection and interoperability to realize graded consultation. Business data convergence has become a trend, and the existing chimney network and data architecture of hospitals is developing in the direction of convergence, high availability, minimalism and intelligence. The original multi-layer network architecture of the traditional network has become a bottleneck, and the multi-layer network architecture brings greater network latency, and the network deployment becomes very complex. Therefore, this trend requires a network that adapts to network and data convergence, has a simple architecture, and supports rapid deployment.
The all-optical network adopts passive optical LAN technology, which has the advantages of simple network architecture, passive fiber media, smooth bandwidth evolution and simple operation and maintenance management, which fits well with the needs of hospitals and supports the evolution of hospital wisdom.
Hospital business in the trend of data convergence, digital hospital will bring rapid development of business, network update cycle is shortened, each time the network update, the transformation of the alignment slot in the building is the most tedious engineering construction and affect the normal work of the hospital.

Intelligent hospital network architecture construction

According to the requirements of hospital business data security, the establishment of “intranet” and “extranet” two physical isolation of the data network. POL passive optical network access technology and full fiber optic transmission links, the “data extranet and TV” integration, the “data intranet and voice” integration as one, so as to provide comprehensive service access, using fiber to the desktop as the main, fiber to the weak power The construction method of fiber to the desktop, fiber to the weak power and the traditional data panel is complementary, and the services can be opened flexibly according to the needs.

The voice network is integrated with the intranet, and the IP voice switch is connected to two intranet core switches respectively, and the office uses ONUs with data and telephone ports (e.g. 2GE+1POTS, 4GE+2POTS, 24FE+24POTS) to provide both intranet and telephone interface capabilities; for places where telephone is not needed, the telephone interface on the ONU can be turned off through the service configuration on the OLT.

Two core switches and two OLTs are used in the intranet for redundancy protection of the backbone link; a certain number of primary splitters are placed in each section building according to the need, and the splitters are directly connected to the PON ports of the two intranet OLTs by two core fibers on the uplink.

The splitter pigtail is connected to the fiber optic information point in each room; the intranet three-layer routing can be flexibly configured according to the actual data traffic situation on site, and can be started in the core switch, OLT equipment, or by adding a set of convergence switches on the convergence side.

A core switch and an OLT are set up in the external network, and a certain number of first-class splitters are placed in each section building according to the need; the splitter uplink is connected to the PON port of the external network OLT using a single-core fiber; the splitter pigtail is connected to the fiber optic information point in each room through a fiber optic distribution frame; the external network three-layer routing can be flexibly configured according to the actual data traffic situation on site, and can be started in the core switch, the OLT equipment, or an additional set of convergence switches on the convergence side.

IPTV system is used for TV network; the TV front-end system in the server room is connected to the core switch of the external network; the same set of transmission links is used for TV and external network; ONU with set-top box function is used in the ward to provide external network and TV for patients.

The intelligent control network and the data extranet use the same set of cores, and the same set of OLTs can be used with the extranet or separately configured OLTs for access to systems such as video surveillance, access control, and intelligent buildings as needed.

Comparison of passive all-optical network POL and traditional networks

Passive optical network is currently the most advanced optical access network technology
The current operators of home and enterprise broadband services have completely eliminated the switch architecture, 100% of the full use of passive optical network for networking, large public and enterprise networks at home and abroad are also beginning to increasingly use passive optical network architecture for networking.

“Optical into the copper back” is the current trend of enterprise network development
The core material of optical fiber itself is glass, compared to copper, inexpensive, the production process produces less pollution, more environmentally friendly; now a single-core fiber optic cable above the data transmission rate of 10Tbps, from this point of view, can be considered unlike the traditional network cable, optical fiber itself is not limited by bandwidth; at the same time, the traditional copper cable there is electromagnetic interference, oxidation and other risks. The full adoption of optical fiber, the construction of all-fiber network, “light into the copper back” is the current direction and trend of enterprise information network development.

Reduced space occupation between the weak power on the floor
After the adoption of passive optical network, the floor is mainly placed 1~2 passive splitters, optical distribution frame and ONU for public area monitoring access; the previous voice distribution frame and intranet access switch are no longer needed; more than 20 large logarithmic cables inside the shaft are no longer needed, saving space at the vertical level.
Smooth upgrade evolution
The whole network can be smoothly upgraded to 10Gbps, 40Gbps and 100Gbps as the bandwidth demand increases, and the entire optical cabling network, including optical fiber and splitter, does not need any change.
Construction cost
The equipment part is the same or slightly higher than the traditional method, and the integrated wiring part can be reduced by 30%~40% compared with the traditional method. Network equipment and integrated wiring can save 10%~15% overall.
Service life
Compared with traditional copper cable, the service life of optical cabling network of passive optical network is longer and the assets are more valuable.

Future development trend of hospital communication network

With the continuous development of smart hospitals, all kinds of hospital infrastructure are gradually moving in the direction of networking, digitalization and intelligence. In response to this trend, network technology is also evolving and improving, actively exploring new applications in healthcare scenarios, and providing the industry with a faster, more stable, secure, green and intelligent network infrastructure.
In general, the new era of large public hospitals in the construction of a hospital multi-district, the construction of a compact county medical community, the construction of regional population health information platform, the introduction of all-optical network technology as the emerging smart hospital networking technology, in the process of development needs to be better adapted to fit the deployment of business applications in various complex scenarios within the hospital, to support the hospital in the new business model of the network’s growing functional and performance requirements, in order to help hospitals through digital, intelligent means to high-quality internal transformation and upgrading.
The construction of smart hospital communication network has been on the fast track of development, and with the triple promotion of technical advantages, policies and market demand, it has ushered in the best opportunity period for network construction.