Fanout Cables
Once the ribbon cable is installed,
the individual fibers may need to
be broken out to individual fibers for
connection to network equipment.
This is accomplished with a fanout
cable. The fanout cable comprises
a ribbon cable in and 12 discrete
loose tube fibers out. The challenge
with loose tube fibers is that they
are subject to pistoning. Pistoning
is when the fiber moves inside the
900-micron buffer; as a result, the
splicer cannot actually control the
position of the fiber during the
alignment process. This will result
in the fusion splicer reporting
an error code as it was not able to
find and align the fiber. The splicing
technician needs to make sure that
a fiber holder is used that can hold
the actual fiber and not the loose
tube buffer.
SUMMARY
Employing ribbon cables in the
data center allows for the most
cost-effective method of handling
the data for today’s bandwidth
intense applications. The newer
rollable ribbon type fibers are
much easier to route, packaging
more fibers per square centimeter,
which results in installation savings.
Technicians who are familiar
with single fiber fusion splicing are
able to make the shift more easily
to mass fusion splicing as they are
already familiar with the processes
and general handling of fiber optic
cables. Even though these technicians
are able to transition more
quickly to mass splicing, they still
need to practice splicing actual
52 I ICT TODAY
cables before they cut into a job that
has a tight deadline; there will likely
be unexpected situations where the
cable provides a few surprises (especially
when it comes to the physical
handling and cable management).
Cleaning is critically important to
keep the stripper, cleaver, and splicer
free from debris and the actual fiber
clean for the splicing process.
Connectors and bulkheads also
need to be inspected and cleaned
if necessary and reinspected to
ensure that a low insertion loss,
low return loss connection is made.
Testing the actual loss with an OTDR
of the fusion splice is important,
as the displayed loss on the fusion
splicer is only an estimate. Some
customers need to have the
OTDR traces recorded as proof
of compliance to data center
installation specifications.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Keith Foord
is the fiber-optic product manager
at Greenlee Communications, which
is undergoing a name change to Tempo
Communications, Inc. He has over 25
years of OTDR, OLTS, and other fiberoptic
instrumentation design experience.
His OTDR technology expertise includes
handheld and laboratory instruments
utilizing conventional pulsed technology
and millimeter resolution with >100dB
dynamic range that employ photon-
counting techniques. Keith can be
reached at keith.foord@emerson.com.
REFERENCES:
1. Figure 2 used with permission
of Sumitomo Electric Lightwave.
©Sumitomo Electric Lightwave 2019.
All rights reserved.
2. Figure 3: recreated illustration:
Source: Sumitomo Electric Lightwave,
www.sumitomoelectric.com.
3. Figure 5: Source: Sumix,
http://www.sumix.com/.
/www.sumitomoelectric.com
/
link