Are You Still Worried about Bending the Fiber Patch Cables?

When you install fiber patch cables, you are not supposed to bend them beyond their bend radius. Light may “leak out” of a fiber when the fiber is bent. As the bend becomes more acute, more light leaks out (shown in the picture below). To install cables in tight spaces of high-density fiber patching areas in the data center especially needs more cable bending. How to solve this problem? The answer is bend insensitive fiber patch cable. With 7.5mm bend radius design, which exhibits much lower optical power loss under bend conditions while remaining compatible with conventional cabling. Install bend insensitive fiber patch cables in your network, then you won’t worry about bending the cable any more.

What Is Bend Radius?

Bend radius is the minimum radius one can bend a pipe, tube, sheet, cable or hose without kinking it, damaging it, or shortening its life. The smaller the bend radius, the greater is the material flexibility. When you install the cables, keep in mind do not exceed the cable bend radius. Usually, if no specific recommendations are available from the cable manufacturer, the cable bend radius should be smaller than 20 times the cable outside diameter when pulling the cable and 10 times the outside diameter when lashed in place. For example, while pulling a 2mm diameter cable allows for a 40mm sweep. When lashed in place make sure it’s a 20mm sweep. For most of today’s fiber patch cables, the bend radius is 30 mm.

Multimode Bend Insensitive Fiber Patch Cable

FS.COM has released multimode bend insensitive fiber patch cables with a minimum bend radius of 7.5mm, which compares very favorably to the 30mm bend radius traditionally specified. To achieve this, an optical “trench” is added to the cladding area outside of the fiber core.  This trench retains more of the light that would have escaped the core of a traditional multimode fiber. Requirements for a tighter bend radius have been developed based primarily on factors in the fiber to the home (FTTH) market. However, the benefits for premise markets have rapidly become apparent, particularly in data centers where more and more fibers are being installed in smaller areas. The expectation is that this new feature can enable deployment of multimode fibers in higher densities.

Single-mode Bend Insensitive Fiber Patch Cable

Single-mode bend insensitive fiber patch cables have been commercially available for several years. ITU recommendation G.657 specifies two classes of single-mode bend insensitive fiber patch cables: G.657 A and G.657 B. Each category (A and B) is then divided into two sub-categories: G.657.A1, G.657.A2 and G.657.B1, G.657.B2. The minimum bend radius of G.657.A1 fibers is 10 mm, of the G.657.A2 and G.657.B1 fibers is 7.5 mm and of the G.657.B2 fibers is 5 mm. Among, ITU-T G.657.A1 and ITU-T G.657.A2 fibers are fully compliant with ITU-T G.652.D fibers. Compared with minimum bend radius of the standard single-mode G652 fibers, which is usually 30 mm, G.657 single-mode bend insensitive fiber patch cables are much more flexible thus can be confidently installed with a variety of installation methods and in the increasingly high‐density application spaces of today’s data center.

Conclusion 

Bend insensitive fiber patch cables are made with solid trench assisted optical fiber that is designed to reduce optical loss when the cable is bent. They provide the same high quality, mechanical features and optical performance as our standard patch cords with the added capability of maintaining optical performance when bent or flexed. FS.COM bend insensitive fiber patch cables are available for multimode (OM2, OM3 and OM4) and single-mode (OS2) networks. Each bend insensitive cable is manufactured with high-quality components and is thoroughly hand-tested for optimum optical performance. For more information, please contact us at sales@fs.com.
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