Fiber Optic Connector, Coupler And Media Converter - EXFIBER
The history of fiber optic telecommunication deserves a book by itself since it took several generations to get the industry today. Optical fiber is a long thin cylindrical fiber made from glass or plastic, as tiny as one tenth of a human hair. A standard telecom optical fiber is composed of three cylindrical layers, counted inside out: fiber core (diameter 8~10um), cladding (diameter 125um) and buffer coating (diameter 900um).
Fiber core and cladding is made from glass or silica. Fiber Core and cladding layers work together to confine the light inside the core without leaking. Fiber buffer coating is made from acrylic or plastic and provides handling flexibility and physical protection for the fiber.
Optical fibers utilize an optical phenomenon called total internal reflection. When light is injected into the fiber from end face, it is confined inside the core without leaking outside and losing its energy.
Then light is digitally modulated to represent 1 and 0 just like a computer, so information can be carried from one site to another site which may be from San Francisco all the way to New York.
What are fiber optic connectors and how do they work?
Now you know how optical fibers work. So what is a fiber optic connector and what's its function in a fiber optic telecommunication network?
Put it simple, a fiber optic connector's function is just like an electric power plug, it connects light from one section of optical fiber to another section of optical fiber.
Since optical fibers are so tiny, fiber optic connectors have to be made with high precision, at the scale of 0.1um which is one hundredth of a human hair.
Fiber optic connectors align two fibers end to end so precisely that light can travel from one fiber into another without bouncing off the interface and loss its signal.
Besides, fiber optic connectors provide cross connect flexibility for the telecommunication network. So a complicated computer network could be made modular and easy to manage.
Just like any other connectors used in electric industry, electronic industry and computer industry, many different kinds of fiber optic connectors were invented along the development of fiber optic communication industry. Some of them once were very popular in the industry and now have served their purposes and are fading away.
The most popular fiber optic connectors used nowadays are SC, ST, LC, FC, MTRJ, SMA and a few of other less popular ones. Sure you will see new connectors invented with the progress of this industry.
Fiber media converters are simple networking devices that make it possible to connect two dissimilar media types such as twisted pair with fiber optic cabling. They were introduced to the industry nearly two decades ago, and are important in interconnecting fiber optic cabling-based systems with existing copper-based, structured cabling systems. They are also used in MAN access and data transport services to enterprise customers. Fiber media converters can connect different Local area network (LAN) media, modifying duplex and speed settings. Switching media converters can connect legacy 10BASE-T network segments to more recent 100BASE-TX or 100BASE-FX Fast Ethernet infrastructure. For example, existing Half-Duplex hubs can be connected to 100BASE-TX Fast Ethernet network segments over 100BASE-FX fiber.
Fiber optic splitter is used to split one beam of optical fiber light into several parts at a certain ratio, for example, a 1X4 LC type equal splitting ratio fiber optic splitter can split the fiber optic light signal into four equal 25% parts and sent to the 4 different channels, LC is the connector type on the splitters. Fiber optic splitter key parameters include the optical loss, splitting ratio, isolation, PDL etc.
Fused fiber optic splitters are mature technology types, it is low cost and easy to make, but fused fiber splitters optical loss are sensitive to wavelength and this is big disadvantages. PLC fiber optic splitters are small size and wide working wavelength, they are more reliable, suitable to use in passive optical network fiber optic splitting, we supply the 1XN and 2XN types PLC fiber optic splitters.
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