Mastering The OTDR: Trace Acquisition And Interpretation

AUTHOR’S PREFACE For 34 years, I’ve been working in fiber optic communications. I’ve made or viewed more than twenty one thousand OTDR races. During these experiences, I, and several of my professional associates, have noted that OTDR testing and interpretation are the two aspects of installation that cause the most difficulty to the largest number of novice installers. This book is designed to reduce such difficulty significantly! With diligence, this book helps you eliminate this difficulty completely! My strategy is ‘divide and conquer’. This book divides the essential knowledge and understanding into five, clearly written, concise, yet comprehensive chapters. Since words alone will not be sufficient, each chapter includes figures, 120 in all, to ensure that all concepts are clear. To further assist you, each of these five chapters includes a summary of key concepts, a total of 66. These five chapters guide you through development of the understanding you need to make and interpret OTDR traces properly. The sixth chapter presents a brief summary of steps you take during field-testing. This summary includes the easily overlooked practical aspects of OTDR testing. The 151 review questions and exercises of the seventh chapter further assist you in testing, developing, verifying and strengthening your understanding. The appendices contain answers or locations of answers. But this text includes more than what I know you need to understand. The 8421 people I’ve trained in more than 500 presentations have asked many excellent questions. These questions have enabled me to refine my explanations so that almost anyone can understand the concepts. Finally, these questions have defined the content and structure of this book. The goal of this book is to develop your knowledge, abilities, and confidence to make and interpret traces properly. With this confidence, you will, rightly so, consider yourself a Master Of The OTDR!