Improved method for the intraoffice infrastructure optical fiber fault location the based on reflectometric analyses

Abstract

The monitoring of the optical fiber infrastructure, especially within the interoffice range, is an essential procedure for the maintenance of the quality of service. Many fiber monitoring techniques can be employed, nevertheless the majority of these methods carry unbearable costs and do not allow a permanent fiber fault examination. In this article, we propose a low‐cost monitoring technique for implementation in reconfigurable optical add‐drop multiplexer architectures. This method makes use of the optical payload itself to assess the integrity of the interoffice fiber section. Our results shown that, considering the broadcast of synchronous digital hierarchy signals, an operation range up to 6.5 km can achieved.