Advantech BB-FOSTCD series

The Advantech BB-FOSTCD are premium industrial serial to fibre optic converters. Their rugged design is UL approved and certified for Class 1/Division 2 industrial environments. These units can extend data communications up to 15 km and provide three-way optical isolation on the input, output and power lines.

In addition to direct point-to-point connectivity, these are capable of operating in a multi-drop mode. This allows one serial device to communicate with up to 31 other devices around a fiber ring. Since it supports mixed standards, you can replace other converters and isolators and add the EMI / RFI protection inherent to fiber optic communications.

With a pair of these Advantech BB-FOSTCD serial to fiber converters, any two pieces of asynchronous serial equipment can communicate at half or full duplex over two fibers at rates up to 460 kbps for RS-422/485 or 115.2 kbps for RS-232. Fiber lines are inherently resistant to EMI/RFI and transient surges, so they are ideal for data communications near heavy electrical equipment and other electrical or radio interference.