A simple and very effective method with improved sensitivity for fault location in optical fibers

A simple method for generating the reflection impulse response of optical fibers using the inverse Fourier transform of the real part of the fiber's reflection baseband frequency-response is described. The achieved dynamic range was about 116 dB. The measurement setup can be simply realized and guarantees the detection of Fresnel reflections with extremely high sensitivity. To suppress undesired reflections, a mathematical convolution algorithm in the frequency domain was designed.>