Multigroove embossed-plastic splice connector for joining groups of optical fibers

To install and maintain successfully an optical fiber communications system, techniques for splicing individual and groups of optical fibers under field conditions must be developed. In this paper a technique for splicing groups of optical fibers with a one piece multigroove embossed plastic connector is described. Using 132-microm multimode fibers with 94-microm core diameters, the average transmission loss of the splice joints measured was 0.12 dB with a standard deviation of 0.11 dB and a range of loss values from 0.0 dB to 0.53 dB.