Multicore fiber (MCF) is increasingly of interest for applications ranging from 3D shape sensing to space division multiplexing to high density coupling for photonic integrated circuits and interconnects. Due to the tight channel spacing in multicore fiber, addressing each core individually is challenging. Chiral’s Multicore Fiber Fanout (MCFFO) enables addressing individual cores of these fibers with high precision and low loss.
Fanouts are typically shipped in spliced pairs. This configuration enables full testing of insertion loss and crosstalk for each pair. MCF and pigtail lengths can be tailored to your needs. The fanout pigtails, the 7 fibers shown in the example above, are typically standard singlemode fibers. However, we have fabricated many custom fanouts with pigtail fibers tailored to meet specific customer needs.
Fanouts can be fabricated to include connectorization and assembly with other components, as desired.
We carry a number of multicore fibers in stock, in limited supply (see MCF Table below) and can supply both the fanouts and MCF. If preferred, we often work with customer-supplied MCF. To date, we have supplied fanouts for MCF with 2 to 22 channels in a variety of configurations (hexagonal, square, circular and others). Some exemplary MCF fibers for which we have fabricated fanouts are shown below, along with related citations. Please speak to us about your specific fanout needs.