6 Steps to Help You to Find the Best Fibre Optic Patch Cord

The choice of a fibre optic patch cord requires, in addition to clarifying the type of connector you need, that you pay attention to other parameters in advance. How to choose the right jumper for your optical fibre according to your actual needs can follow the following 6 steps.

1.Choose the right types of Connector

Different connectors are used to plug in different devices. If the devices at both ends have the same port, we can use LC-LC / SC-SC / MPO-MPO patch cables. If connecting different port types of devices, LC-SC / LC-ST / LC-FC patch cables may be more suitable.

2.Choose Singlemode Or Multimode Fibre

This step is essential. Single-mode fibre optic patch cords are used for long-distance data transmission. Multimode fibre optic patch cords are mainly used for short-distance transmission.

3.Choose Between Simplex Or Duplex Fibre

Simplex means that this fibre optic patch cable comes with only one fibre optic cable, with only one fibre optic connector at each end, and is used for bi-directional BIDI optical modules. Duplex can be seen as two fibre patch cords side by side and is used for common optical modules.

4.Select the Right Wire Jumper Length

5.Select the Right Type of Connector Polish

The optical performance of APC connectors is usually better than that of UPC connectors due to the lower loss of APC connectors than UPC connectors. In today's market, APC connectors are widely used in applications that are sensitive to return loss such as FTTx, passive optical networks (PON) and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). However, APC connectors are often more expensive than UPC connectors, so you should weigh up the pros and cons. For those applications that require high precision fibre optic signals, APC should be the first consideration, but less sensitive digital systems can perform equally well with UPC. Typically, the connector colour for APC jumpers is green and the connector colour for UPC jumpers is blue.

6.Select the Suitable Type of Cable Sheathing

Typically, there are three types of cable jacket: polyvinyl chloride (PVC), low smoke zero halogens (LSZH) and fibre optic non-conductive ventilation system (OFNP)