How To Pick The Right Fiber Connector

How To Pick The Right Fiber Connector

Besides one has a green body and the other being colored blue, the different ways they both treat light is crucial in planning a network as several readers pointed out. To help this understand all this jargon we need to know why flat fiber connector evolved into the physical contact connector and then onto UPC and APC. Flat Fiber connector:

The primary issue with this type of connector is that when two of them are mated it naturally leaves a small air gap between the two ferrules; this is partly because the relatively large end face of the connector allows for numerous slight but significant imperfections to gather on

the surface. This is not much use for single mode fiber cables with a core size of just 8-9 Âľm, hence the necessary evolution to physical contact connectors.

Physical Contact Connector:

The PC is similar to the flat fiber connector but is polished with a slight spherical design to reduce the overall size of the end face. This helps to decrease the air gap issue faced buy regular flat fiber connectors, which results in lower optical return loss with less light being sent back towards the power source.

Ultra physical Contact Connector: Building on the convex end face attributes of the PC, but utilizing an extended polishing method creates an even finer fiber surface finish: bringing us the ultra-physical contact connector. This results in a lower back reflection than a standard PC Connector, allowing more eligible signals in the digital TV telephony and data systems, where UPC today dominates the market.

Most of the engineers and installers believe that any poor performance attributed to UPC connectors is not caused by the design, but rather a poor cleaving and polishing techniques.

UPC connectors do have a low insertion loss, but the back reflection will depend on the quality of the fiber surface and following repeat matings/unmatings, it will begin to deteriorate.

Angle Physical Contact Connector:

So, what the industry needed was a connector with a low back reflection that could sustain repeated matings/unmatings without ORL degradation. Step forward the Angled Physical Contact (APC) connector.

Although PC and UPC connectors have a wide range of applications, some instance requires return losses in the region of one in a million. Only APC connectors can consistently achieve such performance.

This is because adding a small 8-degree angle to the end-face allow for even tighter connections and smaller end face radii. Combined with that, any light that is redirected back towards the source is actually reflected out into the fiber cladding, again by virtue of the 8 degrees angled end face.

It is true that this slightly angled end face. It is true that the slight angle on each connector brings with the rotation issues that flat PC and UPC connectors simply don’t have.

It is also the case that the free aforementioned connectors are all inter-mateable, whereas the APC isn’t. So, why then the APC connector so important in fiber optics?

Use Of APC Connector:

Advance technology in fiber optic cables has driven a great demand for it to replace a more traditional coaxial cable. Unlike digital signals the analog equipment used in applications such as DAS, FTTH and CCTV is highly sensitive to changes in the signal and therefore requires minimal back reflection.

Pick the right physical connector:

Going with the present technology it is clear that all of the connector end face options mentioned in this blog post have a place in the market. Indeed, if we take a sidestep across to plastic optical fiber applications, this can be transmitted with a sharp craft knife and performance is still deemed good enough for use in high end automotive industry.

When your specification also need to consider cost and simplicity, not just optical performance, it's hard to claim that one connector beats the other. Therefore, whether choose APC or UPC will depend on your particular need.

With those applications that for high precision optical fiber signaling, APC should be the first considerations but less sensitive digital system will perform equally well using UPC. For more details, you can visit the following sites: https://www.gbic-shop.de https://www.cbo-it.de