Fiber optica patch cord
In the fiber installation field, fiber optical patch cord, also known as jumper, is one of the important parts to link a network. Fiber optic patch cord is designed for extending the length of fiber optical cables because of emerging demand of higher bandwidth and faster speed connections. Fiber optic patch cord has joint in market up to now, especially the single-mode fiber( SMF) and multimode fiber( MMF). However, both of these optical patch cord cables are widely used in various applications, but there are difference between single-mode patch cord and multimode patch cord. Therefore, the following article will focus on the basic construction, fiber distance and fiber color, to make an in-depth comparison between single mode and multimode fiber.
Singlemode fiber optic patch cord
Single-mode means that only one type of light mode to be transferred at a time, and multimode means that various light mode can be transferred in the fiber. For the most part, the difference between single-mode and multimode cables depend on optical fiber core diameter, fiber distance, wavelength, light source and bandwidth.
Multimode fiber optic patch cord
Single mode fiber cable core diameter is thinner than multimode fiber cable. The former core diameter is 9µm while the later core diameter is 50µm or 62.5µm. the cladding diameter, both of single mode and multimode, is 125µm. Due to the large core diameter size, multimode fiber mainly uses cheap LED( Light Emitting Diodes) and VCSEL( Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers) as light sources that works at the 850nm and 1310nm wavelength are used in multimode fiber cables. While single-mode usually uses a laser or laser diodes as light sources which works at 1310nm and 1550nm.
It is known that the fiber optical patch cord cable is used to extend the length of cables in a run. Hence, single mode optical cable is suitable for long distance applications, and multimode optical cable is designed for short distance runs. Single-mode optical cable distance can be in motion at the data rate from 100M/s or 1G/s, and the distance more than 5km. While OM1/ OM2/ OM3/ OM4 multimode fiber can support higher data rate. Because multimode optical fiber has a large core size and supports more than one light mode, its fiber distance is limited by model dispersion which is a common phenomenon in multimode step-index fiber. While single mode fiber is not.
How to Tell from single mode fiber patch cord and multimode fiber patch cord
The distance difference between singlemode fiber and multimode fiber
Structure difference between singlemode fiber and multimode fiber
Outer Jacket Color difference between singlemode fiber and multimode fiber
In order to distinguish single mode fiber and multimode fiber conveniently, the outer sheath of single mode is yellow color, while, multimode is blue or orange color. Specially, the purple color is used for military.
