Tag Archives: fiber optic cable

What Is Polarization Maintaining Fiber Patch Cable?

The inherent advantages of light are doomed to play an important role in human history. With the booming of human technology, the development of optical fiber communication has made new progress. In the field of optical fiber communication, the most familiar thing for us should be fiber optic cable and patch cable. However, in addition to conventional fiber patch cable, there are some special kinds of fiber patch cable that we have never known. Today, let’s talk about a kind of special optical fiber patch cable: polarization maintaining fiber patch cable (PM Fiber).

Polarization Maintaining Fiber Patch Cable

Polarization Maintaining Fiber Patch Cable

What Are Polarization and Polarization Maintaining Fiber Cable?

If we want to understand PM fiber, we must first understand what polarized light is. Light is a kind of electromagnetic wave. It consists of an oscillating electrical field and a magnetic field. Its properties can be described by studying its electrical field, although we can also describe light and its effects in terms of magnetic field. Light waves can vibrate in many directions. When light vibrate in one direction, such as up and down in a single plane, they are called polarized light. When light vibrate in multiple directions, such as up/down and left/right, on more than one plane, they are called unpolarized light.

What Is Polarization Maintaining Fiber Patch Cable?

The polarization of light propagating in the fiber varies gradually in an uncontrolled (wavelength-dependent) manner, depending on its temperature and any bending of the fiber. Special optical fiber is needed to achieve optical performance, which is affected by the polarization of light passing through the optical fiber. Many systems such as fiber interferometers and sensors, fiber lasers and electro-optic modulators also suffer from polarization-dependent losses (PDL) that may affect system performance. In order to solve this problem, polarization maintaining fiber patch cable was developed. It is a special type of single mode optical fiber. Ordinary single mode optical fiber can carry random polarized light. However, the polarization maintaining fiber patch cable is designed to propagate only one polarization of the input light.

Types of Polarization Maintaining Fiber Patch Cable?

There are many kinds of polarization maintaining fiber patch cable, which support different data rates and are suitable for various connector types. According to different classification standards, polarization maintaining fiber patch cable can be classified into various types.

  • Classified according to connector type – The ends of polarization maintaining fiber patch cable are sealed by optical fiber connectors. The connectors commonly used at both ends of PM fiber are FC, SC, LC and ST. Therefore, according to the connectors at both ends, there are many different types of PM fiber, such as LC-FC, SC-FC or FC-FC polarization maintaining fiber patch cables.
  • Classified according to fiber type – PM fiber is made up of polarization maintaining fiber. To ensure the polarization of the input and output light in PM fiber, we use several different shapes of rods, and the resulting fibers are sold under trademarks such as “Panda” and “Bow-tie”.

Applications of Polarization Maintaining Fiber Patch Cable

Polarization maintaining fiber patch cable is also commonly used in telecommunications for the connection between source lasers and modulators. Because modulators require polarized light as input. Furthermore, it is used for special applications, such as quantum key distribution, interferometry and optical fiber sensing. But, they are rarely used for long haul transmission because Polarization Maintaining Fiber Patch Cable are more expensive and more attenuated than single-mode fibers.

Conclusion

In today’s optical fiber communication systems and applications, it’s necessary to understand polarization. And, it’s important to understand how to characterize and process polarization effects in order to maximize the performance of systems involving polarization sensitive devices. Polarization maintaining fiber patch cable is based on high-precision butt joint technology to maintain polarization. You can contact FS.COM, if you want to know more information.

Why Choose Pre-terminated Fiber Pigtail?

In fiber optic cable installation, how to connect cables to the system is the key to the success of the network. If done correctly, the optical signal can pass through the link with low attenuation and little return loss. Fiber pigtail provides an optimal way to connect optical fibers, which is used in 99% single mode applications.

What Is Pre-terminated Fiber Pigtail

The fiber pigtail of the pre-terminated method is a dedicated hardware connection for cable termination, which passes through the same procedure as the field-terminated fiber pigtail. But these steps are taken at the manufacturer’s facility or cable assembly. Pre-terminated fiber pigtails provides more convenient, easier installation and higher performance than field-terminated fiber pigtails. On the fiber pigtail, one end is bare fiber, and the other end has a pre-installed connector. Fiber pigtail is usually spliced on the strands of multi-fiber trunk cables. Simply speaking, optical fiber pigtail equals optical fiber connector plus fiber optic cable. There are many kinds of fiber pigtail. For example, according to the type of connectors terminated on optical fiber cable, optical fiber pigtail can be classified into FC, ST, SC pigtail.

fiber pigtail

Fiber Pigtail

Advantages of Using Pre-terminated Fiber Pigtail

So, what are the advantages of using pre-terminated fiber pigtail? Why do we use the pre-terminated fiber pigtail?

Superior Performance

One of the main advantages of pre-terminated fiber pigtail is that controlled, pre-terminated factory processes results in superior performance. The uniform and high quality connector end face geometry leads to lower insertion loss and better end-to-end attenuation.

Time & Cost Saving

Because the tails are ready to be installed immediately, there is no connector waste, no tedious tool kits or no need of special testers. Customers reported that the average cost reduction of the pre-terminated fiber pigtail was 20% to 30%, mainly thanks to time and labour savings in the field termination practices.

Environmental Friendliness

In addition to the advantages of having no need to test network performance, reducing downtime, rapid deployment and easy maintenance, the pre-terminated fiber pigtail is also environmentally friendly, eliminating waste and consumables associated with field termination. With the reduction of material cost and better flexibility, pre-terminated fiber pigtail is the better choice of most modern users.

Safety

Safety is always placed in the most important position in data centers. The pre-terminated fiber pigtail does provide many security benefits. Using the pre-terminated fiber pigtail, the installation needs less manpower, so the required expertise is less, and users can even use their own team to do the work.

Conclusion

In fact, most people are willing to choose pre-terminated fiber pigtail because it can provide easier installation ways to speed up data center deployment, reduce costs and errors, and provide great flexibility. That’s why we use it. But if you want to find out which terminated solution is most suitable for your installation, you need to consider all the factors, including consumables, tools, labor, proper training, and rework if needed. Besides, you need to remember that you can terminate and install the pigtail at the job site. If you need more details, please visit FS.COM. You can customize the pre-terminated fiber cable assemblies according to your application.