Analyzing OTDR Measurement Data Using the Kalman Filter

In this paper, we present a method for calculating the attenuation factor and detecting the reflective and nonreflective events using the Kalman filter. For the part of the data whose signal-to-noise ratio is sufficiently high, we propose a second-order linear model by approximating the measurement data after the logarithm is applied; we design the optimal and suboptimal linear Kalman filters based on this model. Through a representative experiment, the proposed method is verified to precisely calculate the attenuation factor and detect the events with minimal computational resources.