Whitepaper: A Very Small Form Factor, Multi-Row, Multi-Fiber Connector with Multi-Vendor Interoperability

The paper describes the design, performance, backwards compatibility, and supply chain maturity of a new, very small form factor (VSFF) multi-fiber interconnect variant of the TMT ferrule. The 24-fiber TMT ferrule is designed with two rows of 12 fibers with the same alignment structure as traditional 24-fiber MT ferrules, enabling the TMT ferrule to be directly mated to legacy MT ferrules. The MMC connector format was used to validate the performance of the 24-fiber TMT design. The connectors were tested in accordance with the requirements of Telcordia GR-1435 [1]. Furthermore, the ferrule was tooled by three different component vendors and a random optical intermate was performed to demonstrate interoperability with ferrules and cable assemblies made from different termination factories.