What Are MPO Fiber Connectors?

---

MPO fiber connector is a passive
component for optical fiber cable connection. It has been widely used in many
projects and plays an important role in the optical fiber transmission system.
In order to give full play to the role of MPO fiber connector in engineering
applications, technicians should pay attention to the main structure and
features of this connector, and master the basic working principle of MPO fiber
connector so that the application of MPO fiber connector can be better put in
practice and the development and innovation of optical fiber transmission
system can be better promoted.

 

You may also see the term MTP used
interchangeably with MPO. The term MTP is a registered trademark of the MPO
connector offered by US Conec. The MTP is fully compliant with MPO
standards and is described by US Conec as an MPO that has been engineered to
very tight tolerances for improved performance. For the purpose of this
discussion, we will refer to only MPO connectors since MTP connectors are
considered to be MPO connectors.

 

Structure of MPO Fiber Connector

MPO is short for the industry acronym—
“multi-fiber push on”. The MPO connector is a multi-fiber, and multichannel
pluggable connector which is most commonly defined by two documents:
IEC-61754-7 (the commonly sited standard for MPO connectors internationally)
and EIA/TIA-604-5 (also known as FOCIS 5, is the most common standard sited for
in the US). It is made up of a male plug , a female plug, and an adapter. The
end of the male plug has two guide pins and a maximum of 72 guide holes, but
the most common are 12 holes. When mating the connector, the spring mounted at
the end of the core insert will provide a thrust on the core insert to lock it
up with the adapter. The guide pins of the plug can restrict the relative
position between the connectors, and ensure the optical fiber mating sequence
is correct.

 

Features & Specifications

MPO connectors utilize precision molded
MT ferrules, with metal guide pins and precise housing dimensions to ensure
fiber alignment when mating. The MPO can be mass terminated in combinations of
4, 8, or 12 fiber ribbon cables. The MPO adapter comes standard in black. The
single mode or multimode MPO products available from fiber-mart.COM are
multifiber connections used in high-density backplane and Printed Circuit Board
(PCB) applications in data and telecommunications system. The MPO connector,
combined with lightweight ribbon cable, represents a huge technological advance
over traditional multifiber cables. It’s lighter, more compact, easier to
install, and less expensive, and it has lower insertion loss over traditional
multifiber cables.

 

Application of MPO Fiber Connector

As mentioned, MPO connectors are
compatible ribbon fiber connectors. MPO fiber connectors cannot be field terminated,
thus MPO connector is usually assembled with fiber optic cable. MPO fiber optic
cable is one of the most popular MPO fiber optic cable assemblies, which are
now being widely used in data center to provide quick and reliable operation
during signal transmission. MPO connectors can be found in the following
applications:

 

Gigabit Ethernet

CATV and Multimedia

Active Device Interface

Premise installations

Optical Switch interframe connections

Interconnection for O/E modules

Telecommunication Networks

Industrial & Medical, etc.

Considerations to Select MPO Fiber
Connector

With the drive of market requests.
Various types of MPO connectors are being provided. Some basic aspects should
be considered during the selection of a MPO connector. Firstly, pin option. MPO
connectors have male and female design (as showed in the figure 1). Male
connectors have two guide pins and female connectors do not. Alignment between
mating ferrules of MPO connectors is accomplished using two precision guide
pins that are pre-installed into the designated male connector. Secondly, fiber
count. MPO connector could provide 4, 6, 8, 12, 24, 36, 64 or more
interconnections, among which 12 and 24 are the most popular MPO connectors. In
addition, like other fiber optic connectors, the selection of MPO fiber
connectors should also consider fiber type and simplex or duplex design.

 

Conclusion

According to aforementioned
introduction, we can see that MPO connector plays an important role in optical
telecommunication as well as the high-density cabling solutions. If you are
preparing to deploy network, it’s advisable that you can purchase quality MPO
connector, MPO cables and MPO cassettes from fiber-mart.COM.