Powerless Sensor for Non-Intrusive Multi-Fiber Traffic Monitoring

Abstract

The rapid expansion of fiber optic networks and services, which sees a large number of circuits enabled and disabled each day, introduces a significant complexity for operators to identify fibers that have and do not have attached clients. The service level agreements prevent operators from disconnecting circuits without absolute assurance that no clients are attached. We propose a non-intrusive multichannel fiber detector to facilitate the operation and maintenance of the optical networks. The optical distribution frame usually does not have any power available, thus, the proposed device operates without batteries and is powered by near field communication (NFC). Device installation does not require fiber disconnection or communication interruption, and introduces less than 1 dB insertion loss to detect optical signals down to -30 dBm. In order to read multiple fiber channel status, an NFC-enabled smartphone is used to power the device and measure the signal levels of each channel.