Evolving trends in CERN optical fibre infrastructure

CERN optical fibre infrastructure has been growing steadily in the past decade due to increasing fibre connectivity demands. The provisioning plan and fibre installation of this vast laboratory is carried out by CERN Fibre Optics and Cabling Section from Engineering Department. In this paper we analyse the procurement data of essential fibre cabling components in a five-year interval to obtain insight on the existing trends. The analysis results predict high contribution of LC and an increasing usage of multi-fibre connectors. It is foreseen that Single-Mode fibres become the main fibre type for mid and long range installations while air blowing would be the major installation technique. Despite of acceptable performance of conventional ferrules, assessment of various connectors shows the expanded beam ferrule is favoured for emerging on-board optical interconnections thanks to its scalable density and the stable return loss.