Fiber fault detection within data transceiver having micro OTDR (μOTDR) for fiber optic network

摘要

The present invention is an apparatus and method that identifies and localizes fiber breaks or faults automatically, utilizing a fiber optic data transceiver that has μOTDR functionality. The transceiver of the present invention is a single wavelength bi-directional transceiver that during normal operation sends and receives optical data streams in the same wavelength window using any protocol and reports the distance to the fault or multiple faults nearly instantaneously when the transfer of data is disrupted, without the need to have fiber lines dedicated for this purpose or physically connect and reconnect each fiber line to check for faults and eliminates the need to map out the distance to the remote transceiver.