Bi-Lateral Comparison between NIS-Egypt and NMISA-South Africa for the Calibration of an Optical Time Domain Reflectometer

Calibration of Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) has a crucial role for the accurate determination of fault locations and the accurate calculation of loss budget of long-haul optical fibre links during installation and repair. A comparison has been made between the Egyptian National Institute for Standards (NIS-Egypt) and the National Metrology institute of South Africa (NMISA-South Africa) for the calibration of an OTDR. The distance and the attenuation scales of a transfer OTDR have been calibrated by both institutes using their standards according to the standard IEC 61746-1 (2009). The results of this comparison have been compiled in this report.

• Osama Terra
• Mariesa Nel
• Hatem Hussein

• OTDR calibration
• recirculating loop
• concatenated method
• standard fibre.

[1] IEC 61746-1, “Calibration of optical time-domain reflectometers (OTDR)”, (2009).
[2] Osama Terra, “Distance Scale Calibration of Optical Time Domain Reflectometer Using Active Intensity Modulation”, MAPAN, 6 (2015).
[3] ISO 98-3, “Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement” (2008).
[4] S. Chang, C. Hsu, T. Huang, W. Chuang, Y. Tsai, J. Shieh, and C. Leung, “Heterodyne interferometric measurement of the thermo-optic coefficient of single mode fibre", Chinese journal of physics, vol. 38, p. 437, (2000).
[5] IEC 60793-1-22, “Optical fibres - Part 1-22: Measurement methods and test procedures - Length measurement”, (2001).