Single Mode Fiber Cable Diameter

Multimode fiber optic cable.

Single mode fiber cable diameter.

Multimode fiber optic cable has a large diametral core that allows multiple modes of light to propagate. With the cladding layer they are 125 micron and with the buffer layer they are 250 micron. The core of the single mode fiber is extremely small approximately five to ten microns. The single mode has a higher capacity and capability than either of the two multimode types.

The basic requirement for single mode fiber is that the core be small enough to restrict transmission to a singe mode. Single mode fiber is usually 9 125 in construction. The fiber core of single mode cable is very narrow so the light that passes through these fiber optical cables is not reflected too many times which keeps the attenuation to a. For example undersea telecommunications cables can convey 60 000 voice channels on a pair of single mode fibers.

The cladding diameter of single mode and multimode fiber is 125 µm. Singlemode fiber optic patch cables come with a 9 micron diameter glass core. There are a number of special types of single mode optical fiber which have been chemically or physically altered to give special properties such as dispersion shifted fiber and nonzero dispersion shifted fiber data rates are limited by polarization mode dispersion and chromatic. This means that the core to cladding diameter ratio is 9 microns to 125 microns.

This lowest order mode can propagate in all fibers with smaller cores as long as light can physically enter the fiber. A typical single mode optical fiber has a core diameter between 8 and 10 5 µm and a cladding diameter of 125 µm.