Industry’s first reflectometer to mange fiber network with ease

NEW DELHI: Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei has announced that the world’s first Embedded Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (eOTDR) has been deployed on MTN’s Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network.

The deployment will enable the South Africa-based telecommunications company MTN to easily manage fiber maintenance and identify network faults.

In order to successfully deploy over 100,000 lines of FTTH networks in Johannesburg and other cities in its network, MTN has identified fiber maintenance as an important issue and its networks required a system which is able to test, locate and demarcate faults.

In addition, the networks require the capability to proactively alert operations and maintenance engineers in the event of optical network performance deterioration, to ensure prompt repair and improve overall network quality.

An Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR), uses scattered and reflected light to measure transmission quality along optical fibers. It is primarily used for fiber testing and troubleshooting.

Huawei's eOTDR is an OTDR system embedded in an OLT PON optical module, co-operating with the Line Assurance System iManager N2510 it can effectively identify physical connections and optical fiber attenuation.

In tests, this solution located on all backbone fiber faults, branch fiber faults, demarcate faults, effectively reduced operations and maintenance field engineer workload by 40%. Being the same size as standard optical modules, eOTDR optical modules can be easily deployed on FTTH networks to support operators to proactively manage its networks.

The eOTDR solution is also easy to deploy as it does not require complex network reconstruction.

MTN selected the Huawei eOTDR as it is an ideal solution for testing and maintaining its FTTH network based on test results and Huawei’s previous experience supporting telecommunications companies worldwide, a statement said.