Adaptive Filter for Automatic Identification of Multiple Faults in a Noisy OTDR Profile

Abstract

We present a novel methodology able to distinguish meaningful level shifts from typical signal fluctuations. A two-stage regularization filtering can accurately identify the location of the significant level-shifts with an efficient parameter-free algorithm. The developed methodology demands low computational effort and can easily be embedded in a dedicated processing unit. Our case studies compare the new methodology with current available ones and show that it is the most adequate technique for fast detection of multiple unknown level-shifts in a noisy OTDR profile.