| Furukawa Electric Co Ltd, Japan, has recently announced the development of the S121A optical fibre fusion splicer, an ideal for connection installations where simplicity and low cost are a requirement. Typical applications for the new connector will include LANs and FTTH (Fibre-to-the-Home) services. One of the most critical issues in the rapidly expanding field of FTTH services is achieving simple, low-cost optical fibre connections to the homes of a rapidly growing number of residential users, despite a wide range of installation environments. Fusion splicing offers reliability as well as high-resistance to environmental factors, and as such has been widely used for some time as a method of achieving optical fibre connections. It has not been seen as the most suitable method for FTTH, however, due to the large size of the equipment and difficulty of operation, and because the high-cost of the equipment has made its use uneconomical. The S121A fusion splicer resolves these problems, offering an entirely new concept in the field of fusion splicing for terminal connections in FTTH and a wide range of other optical fiber networks.
The adoption of an original T-shaped body on the new S121A fusion splicer enables connections using a minimum excess fibre length when the fibre head is inserted into the enclosure, and at the same time, allows the user to hold the fusion splicer in one hand when conducting operations in locations with insufficient working space. The S121A fusion splicer handles only single-core optical fibres. As in the case of Furukawa�s previous models, the fibre is set in the holder, and the unit executes all operations from pre-processing to connection. An enlarged image of the fibre is displayed using a CCD camera and a 2.5� colour LCD monitor, to ensure stable, high-quality connections. This product offers fast, fully automatic connections in only 13 seconds - all the user needs to do is set the fibre in the holder and press a button. The optical fibre connection type can be switched easily between single fibre mode and multi-mode by selecting a pre-set connection programme, and an operation guide is displayed on the screen for even greater ease of use. The unit offers two power supplies; a removable, rechargeable battery, and an optional DC adaptor to allow AC power input.
The S121A thus offers all the functions required to increase reliability and ease of connection operations, and at the same time has excluded loss estimation functions and connection inspection using high-resolution image processing. It ensures very low connection loss in terminal connections (average 0.1dB or less in the case of single mode fibre connections), and provides advanced cost performance in terms of operability, reliability, and economy.
|
