MPO Gender

MPOs are classified by the guide pins on the end of the connector, and require 1 male and 1 female to mate properly. MPO connectors use a “barrel sleeve” adapter that simply holds one male and one female MPO “plug” together. The male guide pins fit into the female holes to ensure precise fiber alignment. Attempting to mate two female connectors will result in a seemingly secure connection, but with extremely high loss, and attempting to mate two male connectors will most likely damage one or both connectors due to the guide pins clashing.

Transceivers and cassettes come with the sleeve adapter built in, and the industry standard is a male conection on the inside. Therefore, the standard for cables is female to female. This changes, however, when you need to extend a cable or connect two cables. You will then need a male to female cable plus adapter. If you’re designing a multi-ferrule MPO trunk backbone cable, you might consider making this male to male, then patching to your hardware with female to female cables. We offer all combinations of genders, so contact us with your needs and we will be able to customize these for you.

MPO Male with Pins	MPO Female without Pins

MPO Polarity

There is typically only 1 common polarity method in the construction of 24-fiber MPO/MTP style patchcords – Straight. The schematic below attempts to visually show how this polarity method is configured. Custom configurations are also available upon request.

24 Fiber MPO cables are most often used in 100G CFP/CXP applications. Transceivers utilize the inside 10 fibers on each row, with Rx on the top row (2-11) and Tx on the bottom row (14-23). Our cables are built with all 24 fibers for additional use with cassettes or other applications. The key-up to key-down configuration sends the top row to the bottom and vice versa.

Parameter Reference

• 24 Fiber MPO
• SMF (9/125um)
• 24 Core High fiber density
• Polish: MPO-APC
• Insertion loss : <0.7 dB (<0.3/<0.5 Optional)
• Return loss : >60dB
• Insert- pull test : 500 times<0.5 dB
• Operation: temperature : -40?~+80?
• Pin Optional: Default FEMALE