Optical time-domain reflectometer
An optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) is an optoelectronic instrument used to characterize an optical fiber. An OTDR is the optical equivalent of an electronic time domain reflectometer. It injects a series of optical pulses into the fiber under test and extracts, from the same end of the fiber, light that is scattered (Rayleigh backscatter) or reflected back from points along the fiber. The scattered or reflected light that is gathered back is used to characterize the optical fiber. This is equivalent to the way that an electronic time-domain meter measures reflections caused by changes  in the impedance of the cable under test. The strength of the return pulses is measured and integrated as a function of time, and plotted as a function of length of the fiber. Reliability and quality of OTDR equipment. The reliability and quality of an OTDR is based on its accuracy, measurement range, ability to resolve and measure closely spaced events, measurement speed, and ability to perform satisfactorily under various environmental extremes and after various types of physical abuse. The instrument is also judged on the basis of its cost, features provided, size, weight, and ease of use. Some of  the terms often used in specifying the quality of an OTDR are as follows: Industry requirements for the reliability and quality of OTDRs are specified in the Generic Requirements for Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) Type Equipment. Types of OTDR-like test equipment. The common types of OTDR-like test equipment are: OTDR data format. In the late 1990s, OTDR industry representatives and the OTDR user community developed a unique data format to store and analyze OTDR fiber data. This data was based on the specifications in GR-196, Generic Requirements for Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) Type Equipment. The goal  was for the data format to be truly universal, in that it was intended to be implemented by all OTDR manufacturers. OTDR suppliers developed the software to implement the data format. As they proceeded, they identified inconsistencies in the format, along with areas of misunderstanding among users. From 1997 to 2000, a group of OTDR supplier software specialists attempted to resolve problems and inconsistencies in what was then called the “Bellcore” OTDR Data Format. This group, called the OTDR Data Format Users Group (ODFUG), made progress. Since then, many OTDR developers continued to work with other developers to solve individual  interaction problems and enable cross use between manufacturers. In 2011, Telcordia decided to compile industry comments on this data format into one document entitled Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) Data Format. This Special Report (SR) summarizes the state of the Bellcore OTDR Data Format, renaming it as the Telcordia OTDR Data Format. The data format is intended for all OTDR-related equipment designed to save trace data and analysis information. Initial implementations require standalone software to be provided by the OTDR supplier to convert existing OTDR trace files to the SR-4731 data format and to convert files from this universal  format to a format that is usable by their older OTDRs. This file conversion software can be developed by the hardware supplier, the end user, or a third party. This software also provides backward compatibility of the OTDR data format with existing equipment. The SR-4731 format describes binary data. While text information is contained in several fields, most numbers are represented as either 16-bit (2-byte) or 32-bit (4-byte) signed or unsigned integers stored as binary images. Byte ordering in this file format is explicitly low-byte ordering, as is common on Intel processor-based machines. String  fields are terminated with a zero byte “\0”. OTDR waveform data are represented as short, unsigned integer data uniformly spaced in time, in units of decibels (dB) times 1000, referenced to the maximum power level. The maximum power level is set to zero, and all waveform data points are assumed to be zero or negative (the sign bit is implied), so that the minimum power level in this format is -65.535 dB, and the minimum resolution between power level steps is 0.001 dB. In some cases, this will not provide sufficient power range to represent all waveform points. For this  reason, the use of a scale factor has been introduced to expand the data point power range.