The Impact of Non-Reflective Events in Optical Fiber Communication Cables

Abstract

This paper presents the impact of non-reflective events (events caused by splices, macrobends or microbends) in optical fiber transmission and also suggests ways of minimizing the losses accrued from these events. During installation of optical fibers, cables that are not properly and professionally laid (i.e. poor splicing, bending radius exceeded etc.) lead to high losses in the links which manifest as poor or interrupted networks. An Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) was used to locate and measure these non-reflective events. The OTDR used backscatter changes in detecting the events in the fiber optics under tests and the results were displayed in OTDR traces. The non-reflective events were seen to have very high impact on the cumulative loss in the optical fiber links and contributed about 97.14% to the cumulative loss as observed in the three optical fiber cores (core 03, core 19, and core 36). Hence, minimizing the number of non-reflective events in any optical fiber communication system where possible should be the target for any optical fiber technician or engineer.