Connection splice fault location in fibre optic cables

Abstract

This paper presents an algorithm for detecting and locating connection splice events (faults) in fibre optic cables by the digital signal processing of noisy optical time-domain reflectometry (OTDR) data. Gabor series expansions, Rissanen's (1978) minimum description length (MDL) criterion, and matched subspace detection methods are employed in the algorithm. It is assumed that the noise is zero-mean, white, Gaussian, and of known variance.