company news about How 400G MTP/MPO Cables Enable Efficient Connectivity

400G MTP/MPO Cables and Transceivers

MTP/MPO cables with multi-core connector are used for optical transceiver connection. There are 4 different types of application scenarios for 400G MTP/MPO cables.

Common MTP/MPO patch cables include 8-fiber, 12-core, and 16-core. 8-core or 12-core MTP/MPO single-mode fiber patch cable is usually used to complete the direct connection of two 400G-DR4 optical transceivers. 16-core MTP/MPO fiber patch cable can be used to connect 400G-SR8 optical transceivers to 200G QSFP56 SR4 optical transceivers, and can also be used to connect 400G-8x50G to 400G-4x100G transceivers. The 8-core MTP to 4-core LC duplex fiber patch cable is used to connect the 400G-DR4 optical transceiver with a 100G-DR optical transceiver.

400G-400G Direct Connection
500m span with 8-fiber/12-fiber MTP/MPO cable
400G short and medium distance direct connection usually consists of 8-core/12-core MTP patch cable with 400G-DR4 OSFP/QSFP-DD modules. The term “DR4″—”DR” stands for 500m reach using single-mode fiber and “4” implies there are 4 x 100 Gbps optical channels. Since one optical channel requires two fibers, an 8-fiber or a 12-core MTP/MPO cable can be used for the 400G-DR4 module to achieve direct connection. In the 8-fiber MTP cabling, the fiber utilization is 100%, while in the 12-core MTP cabling, four fibers remain unused. Take 400G QSFP-DD module as an example, the following picture is presenting the MTP cabling for 400G DR4 direct connection.

400G-2x200G Direct Connection
100m span with 16-fiber MTP conversion cable
In the backbone and some more complex metropolitan area networks, the dual-carrier technology (2x200G) will be adopted to compress the channel spacing compared to a single-carrier 400G technology. Extending the transmission distance and improving the spectral efficiency, 400G-2x200G direct connection can help to deploy 400G backbone networks with minimum bandwidth resources.
In this case, 16-core MTP conversion cables terminated with MTP/MPO connectors on both ends are needed. With this type of cable, one 400G OFSP/QSFP-DD module and two 200G QSFP56 modules can be directly connected

400G-4x100G Direct Connection
500m span with 8-fiber MTP/MPO trunk cable and 4-LC duplex patch cable
In the 400G to 4x100G migration scenario, an 8-core MTP-LC cassette that packaged in the fiber rackmount enclosure is adopted to realize the transmission from MTP to LC, and then an 8-core MTP/MPO trunk and 4-LC duplex patch cables are used to connect at both ports.
The 400G-4x100G architecture uses four optical modules with 100Gbps wavelengths. However, the current 100G technology is based on a 4x25G design and unable to scale to 400G. 100Gbps per channel can be achieved using PAM4 technology and then aggregated to achieve an overall 400Gbps speed with 4x100G. MTP/MPO cables allow splitting 400G bandwidth into multiple 100G or 40G data streams.