Patent ID: 8045143

Claim:
An apparatus to measure optical characteristics of an optical medium, comprising: an optical source to generate an optical square wave for transmission into the optical medium; an optical receiver to receive a reflected optical waveform from the optical medium caused by a portion of the optical square wave being reflected by any anomaly in the optical medium and wherein the optical receiver converts the reflected optical waveform to a reflected electrical waveform; a module to combine the reflected electrical waveform with a reference waveform to form a resulting waveform, wherein the reference waveform corresponds substantially to the optical square wave and is delayed a predetermined time duration; a controller that processes the resulting waveform to detect any anomaly and a location of the anomaly in the optical medium based on an amplitude of the resulting waveform at a sample delay position in the resulting waveform, wherein the controller comprises a microprocessor that generates a mathematical representation of the resulting waveform from sampling the resulting waveform, and wherein the mathematical representation comprises the resulting waveform represented in a matrix form comprising: a column vector including a selected number of samples of the resulting waveform corresponding to a length of the optical medium; a matrix including a selected number of rows and columns, wherein each row corresponds to a delayed representation of the optical square wave and wherein the delayed representation of the optical square wave in each successive row is incrementally delayed by a sample delay position along the optical medium; and another column vector including a plurality of elements corresponding to an amplitude along the resulting waveform at a plurality of sample delay positions, wherein any delayed reflections caused by an anomaly are represented by an amplitude value in a position in the column vector corresponding substantially to a sample location along the optical medium, and wherein the column vector including the selected number of samples of the resulting waveform is equated to the matrix multiplied by the other column vector.