Ribbon fibers are 2-24 optical fibers arranged parallelly and solidified together. 4 cores, 6 cores and 12 cores are more common and widely used.

Ribbon fiber cables application

Optical fiber ribbon cables are recommended to be used in large and medium-sized metropolitan area networks with a large number of optical cable cores (not less than 72 cores), such as the core layer of the metropolitan area optical cable and the backbone section of the access layer.

Trunk optical cables, other optical fiber cable sections with a relay distance of more than 70km, access layer optical cable lead-in sections (distribution optical cross-fiber box section) and other sections with smaller optical fiber cores are not suitable for the use of optical fiber ribbon optical cables.

The Advantages and Disadvantages

1. Ribbon fibers can be spliced by ribbon fiber fusion splicer, max 12 cores at one time, so greatly improving the efficiency of splicing. The more cores in each optical fiber ribbon, the higher efficiency of the connection.

But if the optical fiber ribbon is spliced with discrete optical fibers or optical fiber ribbons with different core numbers, it is necessary to tear the optical fiber ribbon discretely before splicing, which will be more troublesome than the splicing of ordinary optical cables.

2. Since it is impossible to ensure that all fibers in the ribbon can be accurately aligned when the optical fiber ribbon is spliced, the splicing loss will be greater than that of a single core.

So it is important to choose a good ribbon fiber splicer. Shinho X-950 is specially designed for Ribbon fibers up to 12 cores. It's applicable to different types fibers with accurate alignment, world standard fusion loss( SM 0.05dB, MM 0.02dB). It is suitable for different fiber optical projects and various environmental conditions.