Fiber Enhancements

Corning Incorporated offers additional enhancements to its Corning SMF-28 and Titan single-mode fibers, which are being implemented to drive down the costs of installing optical communications systems. This is the third in a series of improvements that Corning has made in an effort to reduce splicing costs, improve bending performance and cabling capabilities, and enhance overall system performance. Corning is improving SMF-28 and Titan fiber core/clad concentricity specification from <0.6µ to <0.5µ and its fiber coating diameter specification from 245 ±10µ to 245 ±5µ. To improve the products' bending performance, Coming will tighten its mode field diameter specification from 9.30 ± 0.50µ to 9.20 ±0.40µ and improve its 100 turn bend specification from a 75 to 50 mm mandrel with <0.05 dB and <0.10 dB attenuation increase at 1310 and 1550 nm wavelengths, respectively.

According to a 1997 study presented at NFOEC '97, fiber geometry plays an important role in fiber-splicing efficiency. Specifically, the study showed that tighter fiber geometry facilitates lower-cost passive alignment splicing techniques, such as mass fusion splicing and positively impacts splice yields. The tighter coating diameter tolerance supports improved cable processing performance and geometry, particularly in ribbon cables designed for mass fusion splicing.

The mode-field change and the improved bending specification change are focused on improving fiber and cable performance in local access and metropolitan applications. Coming's Titan and SMF-28 optical fiber products will migrate to these new specifications over the next six months.

Corning Inc., Contact: M. Elizabeth Dann, 607-974-4989 or Lisa A. Burns, 607-974-4897