Lucid paper "Statistical model for the validation of unidirectional OTDR splice loss measurements" as published in IEE Proceedings Optoelectronics Special Issue (Oct 2006) on Selected papers from OFMC 2005
Authors: A.L. Colton, C. Beech, J.R. Colton, P. Frost, N.R. Haigh and E. Tozowonah
Authors are with Lucid Optical Services Ltd, except for C. Beech, P. Frost and E. Tozowonah of Global Marine Systems Ltd.
Abstract:
A mathematical model is developed along with an associated software tool which, for two given fibre types and a given one-way optical time domain reflectometer splice loss result, evaluates the probability of the splice being within a set specification. The model includes both mode field diameter (MFD) mismatch splice loss, difference in backscatter levels due to MFD and refractive index (RI) differences for each fibre, and also takes into account the statistical variation of MFD and RI. The mathematical assumptions are validated against Monte Carlo simulations, and the mathematical model against a set of bi-directional splice loss measurements from 1638 splices between seven fibre types with MFDs ranging from 5.98 to 11.8 um. Practically, the model is implemented as a stand-alone software package featuring a user-friendly interface.
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Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to staff of the NPL and the IEE for selecting our paper and putting together the special issue of the Optoelectronics Journal. Thanks also to our colleague Prof. Geoff R. Davies for proof readings and suggestions to the final draft of the paper.
Note: the IEE and IIE are coming together to form the IET, the Institution of Engineering Technology. For the moment the IET journals are still being published as the IEE and IIE publications respectively.