Maintaining your equipment’s interface & connectors is absolutely critical to achieving quality results. Damaged instrumentation interfaces and reference cables can add loss and reflections as well as reduce stability, making it difficult to take accurate measurements. In addition to adhering to strict policies regarding cleaning and inspection, one way to maintain instrumentation interfaces and reference cords is to use SAVer cables and extension leads.
AN-132 SAVer Cable Short Instructions
The SAVer cables are designed to ‘save’ the instrument front panel from dirt, scratches and potentially expensive repairs and downtime. When the SAVer cable is used with the high quality mating adapter, MAAD-FC, your front panels will stay clean without adding loss. The SAVer cable can be repolished or replaced quickly and easily.
AN-125 Bend-Insensitive Multimode Fiber (BIMMF)
It is no secret that when standard optical fiber is bent, twisted, or otherwise contorted, it will exhibit increased loss. Until recently it was an accepted fact that in certain situations, such as in patch panels, cabinets, enclosures, and other places where space is limited or sharp corners or bends exist, there was a trade-off between how small these spaces could be and how long the cables would have to be without significant bend loss due to bending, twisting, or stretching. In 2009, however, a more durable, stress-resistant type of multimode cable was developed and it is revolutionizing fiber optics by allowing enclosures, patch-cabinets, and other types of cable hubs to be designed much more compact than was previously possible without introducing loss.
AN-114 RL Testing for APC Terminated Cables
When referencing return loss, the OP930 scans a length of fiber and looks for a large reflection (~14dB or a 4% reflection). However, a reference cable that has an APC endface will not give a reflection large enough to trigger the OP930 to reference. To fix this issue and to be able to measure DUTs with APC endfaces, two methods will be discussed below that will allow the OP930 to perform a proper reference measurement.
AN-115 Referencing Return Loss Using the MTP Reference Reflector
It is not uncommon for a tester to find themselves attempting to test return loss on an MTP connection, but find themselves unable to reference to the correct location. Sometimes this is due to dust or oil contamination or physical damage on the endface of the fiber, which can be corrected and prevented through proper care and maintenance.
Testing hybrid cables poses certain difficulties due to the ends having unlike connector types. Typically hybrid bulkheads/adapters are required (SC-FC, ST-FC, etc.) and many times they solve the problem with minor issues. However, in some circumstances hybrid bulkheads will not suffice.
When testing SC-LC cables, such an instance arises. SC-LC bulkheads have high loss and poor repeatability and as such, they should not be used in the testing process. To get around this issue, the golden cable method can be used.
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