OMTDR based integrated cable health monitoring system SmartCo: An embedded reflectometry system to ensure harness auto-test

This paper presents the first embedded health monitoring system able to analyze network/harness health using OMTDR (Orthogonal Multi-tone Time Domain Reflectometry) technology. OMTDR is a suitable candidate for on-line diagnosis as it permits interference avoidance by bandwidth control. Thanks to OMTDR´s communication capability, network analysis as well as sensors intelligence can be easily distributed without any impact on network traffic. Complex network can be analyzed and fault location ambiguity can be solved thanks to distributed analysis. This enables to aggregate diagnosis information from several sensors and make a high level decision. Even for a simple network, OMTDR obtains a better fault location accuracy by combining different location data. In this paper, we analyze the benefit of integrating OMTDR into the harness. The demonstrator embeds both real time distributed wire diagnosis and sensor communication in 2 standard aerospace connectors. Thanks to this intelligence and capability added into commercial connectors, we call this innovative proposed solution: SmartCo for Smart-Connector. Hardware, software and demonstrator interface are presented in details.