Investigation of the precision regarding fiber fault location with a commercial Optical Time Domain Reflectometer

Abstract

Optical Time Domain Reflectometry (OTDR) is a standard technique used to investigate the quality of optical fiber installations. It basically measures power loss and reflectance properties of optical fibers. These quantities are significantly influenced if fiber faults (broken fiber, bends, but also connectors and splices) are present. Thus OTDR devices can be used to locate fiber faults. How precise they can do this has a large effect on the effort needed in order to remove faults. Thus we present in this paper data that has been obtained by using a commercial OTDR device to detect the before mentioned faults. This data will be analyzed regarding the characteristics of the OTDR response depending on the fault type, with special emphasis on the precision of the fault location's determination.