The Importance of Additional Headroom

September 2001
Asef Baddar
Application Engineer
General Cable
4 Tesseneer Dr.
Highland Heights, KY 41076
On April 23, 2001 a new published Standards document ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-B.1 replaced
the current Standards document ANSI/TIA/EIA-568-A dated October 6, 1995.
With the business environment having undergone a period of rapid change marked by the
growth of increasingly powerful PCs, access to more sophisticated applications and the
need to interconnect different systems have placed increased demands on the transmission
capacity of premise cabling. This growing trend has led to the development of enhanced
transmission characteristics in cabling systems.
The purpose of this white paper is not to promote or recommend any specific brand name
product. Instead, the objective is to explore the issues surrounding headroom and
demonstrate how premium Category 5e and Category 6 cables offer solutions, with a
network system performance guarantee, against these potential problems.
Headroom is commonly defined as space above ones head; clearance. In structured
cabling, headroom is defined as any additional ACR (measured in dB) better than
specification. For example, TIA/EIA-568B.2 Part 2 under Balanced Twisted Pair Cabling
Components specifies that Cat-5e cable @ 100 MHz have a minimum of 13.3 dB.
Therefore, if a cable is tested @ 100 MHz with the result of 18.8 dB, we would state that
this cable has 5.5 dB of headroom (clearance or margin) over Cat-5e cable requirements.
Many issues arise with inconsistencies in terminations and installations. If the installer
does not follow the TIA/EIA-568B.1 Part 1 General Requirements installation guide, the
results will be an under performing network. The installation must be performed perfectly
to support todays 100BASE-TX & 1000BASE-TX and this is very difficult to control.
When looking at terminations, General Cable has conducted tests to analyze the effects of
pair untwisting (when terminating) beyond the telecommunication industrys
recommended one half inch and have confirmed anticipated results. First, we took a
Category 5e cable and tested it to establish a benchmark. The cable passed all Category 5e
requirements with good margins. Next we exceeded the recommended one half inch
maximum by untwisting each pair to 1. The results from this action negatively effected
Power Sum Near End Cross Talk (PSNEXT) & Return Loss (RL) requirements. We then
took this one step further and untwisted the pairs by 1 to see what impact it would have
on PSNEXT and Return Loss. As expected, we saw more deterioration due to increased
untwisting (see Figures 1 & 2 for a comparison of results between not untwisted, 1
untwisted, and 1 untwisted.)
Testing Terminated Conductors
Not Untwisted 1 Untwisted 1 Untwisted
Figure 1
Power Sum NEXT (PSNEXT)
25
35
45
55
65
75
85
0 1 10 100
Frequency MHZ
P
S
N
E
X
T

d
B
/
1
0
0
m
Spec Limit Baseline 1"Untwisted 1"Untwisted
1" Untwisted
1 " Untwisted
Spec. Limit
Baseline
Figure 2
As we can see from Figures 1 & 2, untwisting the pairs has a significant affect on
PSNEXT and Return Loss and therefore is a major cause of reduced throughput and
distance within a network. This is one condition in which additional headroom would be of
value to the network.
Other identified installation practices create a negative impact on the cables performance.
Some existing research demonstrates that the following termination and installation
conditions would increase the cables Near End Cross Talk (NEXT).
Table 1 shows specific cable conditions and the increase in NEXT as a result of these
conditions.
Cable Condition NEXT
Increase in dB
Kinked cable and then repaired 0.5
Removed 1 of cable sheath at the termination end 1.2
Untwisted pairs at the termination end 1.5
Untwisted pairs 1 at the termination end 2.9
Untwisted pairs 1 at the termination end 3.8
Replaced 2 Cat-5e patch cord with 2 Cat-5 patch cord 4.0
Replaced 20 Cat-5e patch cord with 20 Cat-3 patch cord 13.0
Table 1
Return Loss (RL)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
0 1 10 100
Frequency (MHz)
R
e
t
u
r
n

L
o
s
s

(
d
B
)
Spec Line Baseline 1"Untwisted 1"Untwisted
Spec Line
1" Untwisted
1" Untwisted
Baseline
As mentioned above, additional headroom is beneficial in cases of inconsistent
terminations and tough installations. Environmental issues have been identified as
situations in which extra headroom is also very important for customers. When cables are
located in noisy environments, where EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference) is high, the
higher outside noise creates more cross talk. Increased headroom in this case would be
required by the network in order to perform efficiently. For example, if a premium
Category 5e cable with 6 dB of PSNEXT headroom is installed in an environment
impacted by EMI, then it would be expected that the noisy environment would utilize all
the headroom available in the cable. Therefore, the additional headroom would allow the
cable to maintain compliance.
With the TIA/EIA-568B.2 Part 2 Standards in place for Category 5e and the Standards for
Category 6 pending, more emphasis will be placed on the cabling systems than any other
preceding standard. Enhanced Category 5e and Category 6 still offer the best combination
of price and performance when total systems costs are taken into consideration. The
industry believes that when premium Category 5e and Category 6 cables and components
are in tune with one another, including added headroom, the outcome will be optimum
network reliability, throughput and the best overall value. General Cable can provide
product meeting all existing and emerging requirements.
General Cable is a leading manufacturer of network copper and fiber optic cable
products. The Company offers a complete range of Datacom solutions, from
conventional Category 5e, to enhanced Category 5e and Category 6 copper cabling, to
the most advanced fiber optic and blown fiber systems. General Cables enhanced
copper solutions were the first to receive independent certification from Tolly and
ITS for Gigabit application. General Cable's fiber optic cables are designed,
engineered, and manufactured to specification for commercial, specialized and
custom applications.