Surveillance of access fibre systems

A central-access system (CAS) has been developed by Bell Canada. It is used to monitor Northern Telecom´s FMT-45, FMTC-45C and FMT-150 fibre-optic terminals in the access network. CAS permits surveillance and control of these terminals from a central location. The CAS architecture, feature set, and hardware are reviewed. The CAS consists of a host and a set of remote terminals. The host mediates user requests and translates them into the protocol used by the remote terminals, which transmit user requests back to the host. Functions performed by the host include alarm polling, handling of remote user requests, and interfacing with external communication systems; the remote terminal functions include centralized alarm reporting and alarm storage. Multiple hosts, each with up to four remote terminals, comprise of the overall system. In addition, the results of a recent field are discussed.<>