April/May/June 2020 I 47
THE CONNECTOR AS A SOLUTION
AND A REVOLUTION
The Connector Innovations of Today
Using decades-old connector technology to support
today’s challenges has often resulted in inefficient, unreliable,
and inoperable network infrastructures at extremely
high costs. Therefore, the connected components industry
is overdue for a refresh and revitalization.
Some manufacturers are rising to the occasion to
address today’s challenges by designing new connector
technologies that support high-density, low-loss connectivity,
ease of installation, faster deployment, lower total
cost of ownership, and greater flexibility for growth and
scale. Listed are several of the latest connector technologies
revolutionizing the connected infrastructure:
LC Connector Advancements: The updated LC connector
helps resolve some of the original challenges of polarity,
flexibility, and the push tab release.
• Quick polarity switch and on-the-fly flips
• Easy reach and push-pull tab connect
• Mini/uniboot for increased flexibility
• Shutter adapters for dust protection
MPO Connector Advancements: The updated MPO
connector has more strand capacity, dust protection,
and easier polarity and gender transitions.
• Increased capacity and strand counts (24+)
• Higher performance and low dB loss
• Quick polarity flips and field gender changes
• Shutter adapters for dust protection
• 10 Gb/s to 40 and 100Gb/s network migrations
• High-density backplane applications
• Shorter lengths and smaller footprint
New Dual Density, Compact, Duplex Optical Fiber
Connectors: These are a more compact, miniature version
designed as a higher density replacement of the standard
LC duplex connector; they have push-pull operation.
They also can be coupled together for QSFP applications.
• 40 percent size reduction over traditional LC
• Grouped for easy QSFP (4x duplex)
• Increased fiber density at the transceiver
• Easy reach and push-pull tab connect
• Support polarity changes in the field
• Simple insertion and extraction
• Some manufacturers offer a three-port adapter and
proprietary patch cables for the transceiver interface
(refer to the standards section herein)
New Expanded Beam High-Density, Dust-Insensitive
Optical Fiber Connectors: These fiber connectors have
a small form factor interface with potentially high-capacity
strand counts. Some expanded beam connectors claim
up to 144-fiber capacity but at the time of this writing are
only currently available on a limited basis provided only
for market and technical evaluation. These high capacity
connectors, however, are exhibiting relatively high insertion
losses (<0.70 dB) for SMF. Others with lower capacity
(32-fibers) provide much better insertion losses for SMF
at 0.5 dB. There may be others with even better insertion
losses.
• Dust-insensitive connector
• Highest-capacity strand count currently available
(64-f) for MMF only; larger strand count
in development
• Gender agnostic (some versions)
• Available in MMF and/or SMF depending
on manufacturer
• Decreased impact of debris due to larger beam
cross section
• Some exhibit very high SMF insertion loss while
others exhibit lower losses.
Newly Introduced Hyper-Capacity, Self-Cleaning
and Protecting Universal Multi-Fiber Connector:
This is a recently patented high-capacity and extreme
performance fiber connector that can be easy to deploy.
It was specifically designed to be an all-around connector
solution.
In the MPO and LC high-capacity connector sector, it
currently boasts the highest performance with the lowest
maximum insertion loss of 0.35 dB at 1310 nm on SMF
cables and random mating based on stringent third-party
testing. The maximum 0.35 dB consistently performed for
>97 percent of samples based on IEC 61300-3-34 and IEC
61753-1. Likewise, return loss (reflectance) performed