Measuring the individual attenuation distribution of passive branched optical networks

Abstract

We propose a new method for measuring the individual attenuation distribution of passive branched optical networks and describe our experimental results. This test method employs two techniques. One is a passive optical distribution technique, whereby communication light is uniformly distributed to all branched fibers, and test lights are distributed to each branched fiber according to their wavelength. The other is an attenuation distribution measurement technique using an optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) which can control the test light wavelength.