Optical connectors for printed circuit board interfaces are required for the implementation of high-density multi-fiber connection. We have developed a fiber physical contact (FPC) connector to meet this requirement. The FPC connector has to ensure reliability when bare fibers are used. Moreover, the FPC connector must employ an established coupling mechanism and provide higher density connection. To meet these requirements, we developed a 16-fiber FPC connector that utilizes the MU connector coupling mechanism and a shutter. We connect the 16 fibers in the housing of the duplex MU connector. We developed compact shutters that open only when they come into contact with each other. Moreover, the developed FPC connector enables us to clamp the fibers to a plug without adhesive. This structure can greatly boost the production yield. We confirmed that the developed FPC connector has an easy connection operation and good optical performance, and we verified that the shutters open properly.

We propose and demonstrate a new type of field installable optical connector that enables us to realize physical contact connection without polishing the fiber endface by using a sharpened fiber endface and the compression force of buckled fiber. We confirmed that all the assembled connectors achieved physical contact connection without the fiber endface being polished, and provided good optical performance with a low insertion loss of 0.08 dB and a high return loss of over 49 dB.

We have developed a fiber physical contact (FPC) connector for the high-density connection of optical fibers. This connector individually aligns multiple bare fibers in micro-holes without ferrules and realizes physical contact by using the buckling force of the fibers themselves. The fiber endfaces must be tapered to allow the fibers to be inserted into the micro-holes. The endfaces must also be polished so that they realize physical contact (PC) with excellent optical performance. For each process, we examined the required shape and processing condition of the fiber endface for the FPC connector. As regards tapering, we determined the processing condition for achieving a target tapering angle and developed a non-breaking process with the optical fibers bent. In terms of polishing, we revealed that it is important for the fiber endface angle error to be less than 0.7 degrees if we are to achieve excellent optical performance. These results allowed us to fabricate an FPC connector that exhibited excellent levels of optical performance.

Optical connectors for printed circuit board interfaces are required for the implementation of reliable high-density multi-fiber connection. We developed a 16-fiber fiber physical contact (FPC) connector with an MU connector coupling mechanism and a compact shutter to meet this requirement. In the FPC connector, two arrays of fibers are aligned in micro-holes without ferrules. A micro-hole array is a key component as regards the optical characteristics of the FPC connector. We developed a 16-ch micro-hole array composed of injection molded zirconia ceramics. The 16-fiber FPC connectors with a zirconia ceramic micro-hole array had an insertion loss of less than 0.3 dB with an average value of 0.07 dB and a return loss of over 45 dB. The optical characteristics remained stable in environmental and mechanical tests.

We describe a physical-contact (PC) multicore fiber (MCF) connector with good optical characteristics. To achieve stable physical-contact connection, we clarify the relationship between connector-end deformation and compression force with spherical polished ferrule end structures using finite element analysis and actual measurements. On the basis of the obtained relationship, we demonstrate a design approach that shows the physical-contact condition of all the cores of a multicore fiber with a simplex connector. In addition, we clarify the design criteria for low-loss connection by employing a rotational angle alignment structure, and devise an SC-type rotational MCF connector with high alignment accuracy. Based on our designs for PC and low-loss connection, we demonstrate an MCF connector with PC connection that provides a sufficiently high return loss exceeding 50dB and a sufficiently low connection loss of below 0.2dB for all the cores of a 7-core single-mode MCF.

The increasing number of channels in dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems has led to the need for wiring involving a large number of optical fibers in the system racks. We have developed a novel scalable optical fiber wiring system designed to realize as many as 10,000-fiber shuffled interconnections without fiber congestion. We propose a scheme for constructing a large-scale shuffler capable of permuting interconnected fibers that employs plural optical fiber sheets, and for arranging optical fibers without congestion in racks. We constructed a 16,384-fiber shuffler system with sixty-four 256-fiber shuffler sheets and 16-fiber fiber physical contact (FPC) connectors for a 128128 switch system with 1128 planar lightwave circuit (PLC) type thermo-optic switches (TOSW). Input here the part of summary.