A Low-Frequency Tone Sweep Method for In-Service Fault Location in Subcarrier Multiplexed Optical Fiber Networks

We demonstrate an optical fiber fault location method based on the frequency response of the modulated fiber optical backscattered signal in a steady-state low-frequency step regime. Careful calibration and measurement allows for the reconstruction of the fiber transfer function, which, associated to its mathematical model, is capable of extracting the fiber characteristics. The technique is capable of identifying nonreflective fault events in an optical fiber link and is perfectly compatible with previous methods that focus on the reflective events. The fact that the recuperation of the complex signal is performed in the frequency domain and not via a Fourier transform enables the measurements to overcome the spatial resolution limitation of Fourier transform incoherent-OFDR measurements even with frequency sweep ranges down to 100–100 000 Hz. This result is backed up by a less than 10 meters difference in fault location when compared to standard optical time domain reflectometry measurements.