Optical-fiber fanout connector for 10-fiber ribbon cable termination

This paper proposes a novel type of ribbon-to-single-fiber fanout connector applied to high-density high-count optical cables composed of fiber ribbons. The fanout connector provides individual access to fibers in the 10-fiber ribbon. Construction of the connector is made by assembling newly developed multifiber and single-fiber connectors: the former is a small plastic 10-fiber ribbon connector, and the latter is a push-on type single-fiber connector allowing easy push-pull reconnections. The fabricated fanout connector has shown an average insertion loss of 0.5 dB and a return loss of larger than 30 dB for the conventional graded-index multimode fibers. Mechanical and reconnectability test results have been entirely satisfactory for the practical use of the connector.