Development and prototyping of the Versatile Link + optical fibre cabling plants for the HL-LHC upgrades of the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN

With the foreseen upgrades in HL-LHC, the Versatile Link Plus project was launched to develop the optical fibre links between the experiments and the counting room, in order to reach higher data rates. New fibre cabling plants have been designed in this framework for tight integration in experiment front ends and operation at higher radiation doses. Those cabling plants make use of novel multi-fibre assemblies that are tailored to the specific experiment requirements and conditions. This paper describes the design decisions that have led to the final production-ready prototypes and the related implementation of a large-scale procurement framework.