Low-rigidity optical fiber ribbon and its application to ultra-high-density cable with bending-loss insensitive fibers

We propose a novel optical fiber ribbon using bending-loss insensitive fibers aimed at tightly and randomly assembling in small core of the cable. Proposed ribbon is designed to be capable of mass-splicing and to suppress local bending and strain increase caused by cabling and cable bending by reducing flexural rigidity against bending under high fiber density assembling. We manufactured the cable with proposed ribbons and achieve the maximum fiber density of a 4.1 fiber/mm2 for 400-fiber cable in conjunction with good optical loss and strain characteristics.