Fiber plant manager: an OTDR- and OTM-based PON monitoring system

Wider deployment of fiber in the last mile is driven by increased customer needs for high capacity communication. This deployment requires solutions that reduce the operators´ OPEX. A cost-efficient fully reliable and accurate monitoring solution supporting fault detection, identification, and localization in different fiber access topologies will be a key part of such solutions. In this article, we discuss practical requirements for a successful PON monitoring technique followed by an overview of published proposals. We also present a method to monitor power-splitter- and wavelength-splitter-based PON, through combined techniques of OTDR and OTM. The method is non-invasive to data traffic flow and requires no additional functionality (hardware or software) at the ONT side. The description of the overall architecture and components is followed by measurement results.