Accurate Location of Fiber Cable Fault with OTDR

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26636/jtit.2021.158621

Keywords:

fault location, fiber optic cable, helix factor, OTDR, single-mode fiber

Abstract

The paper reviews the factors limiting the accuracy of locating a fiber optic cable fault when using an optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) and describes an error estimation method for typical use cases. The primary source of errors lies in the complex relationship between the length of the optical fiber (measured by OTDR), its routing, cable design depending on cable design and type of installation (i.e. duct, directly buried, aerial) as well as the spare lengths used for service purposes. The techniques which considerably improve the accuracy of the fault localization processes are presented, the importance of accurate documentation of the network and of referencing the fault location to the nearest splice instead of end of the line are discussed, as is the absence of cable helix factor in data sheets.

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Submitted

2023-05-16

Published

2021-12-30

Issue

No. 4 (2021)

Section

ARTICLES FROM THIS ISSUE

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

[1]
K. Borzycki and P. Gajewski, “Accurate Location of Fiber Cable Fault with OTDR”, JTIT, vol. 86, no. 4, pp. 42–52, Dec. 2021, doi: 10.26636/jtit.2021.158621.

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