Jun 16 2010
Wang Yun Cai, professor of Taiyuan University of Technology, along with his student Wang An Bang, has proposed a concept of optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) for precise fault location in fiber links.
OTDR is developed using a chaotic light correlation method. The correlation method can be deployed for precise fault location in high-density fiber links and non-destructive detection of small-size fiber networks. Wang Yun Cai’s work is published in SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences, in the issue 53 of February 2010.
By using the correlation technique, distance-independent resolutions of 25 km and 6 cm were accomplished for single-mode fiber. The broadband chaotic light from a laser diode produced high accuracy for fiber fault location. The advantage in using broadband chaotic light for fiber fault location is that a laser diode with optical feedback can produce a chaotic light signal of multi-GHz bandwidth and large-amplitude, without using an electro-optical modulator.
The international workshop on chaos applications in telecommunications and sensors, 2009 lists the chaotic correlation OTDR as one of three novel applications. Wang said that the current research focuses on achieving high accuracy in fiber fault location. The next objective of the research is to measure the Rayleigh scatters and fiber loss.