Prioritizing repair of signal leakage in an HFC network

摘要

A method or apparatus of identifying for repair a signal leak in an HFC network, wherein a base transceiver station in the vicinity of the HFC network transmits a BTS signal over-the-air. The method comprises or apparatus performs the steps of: (a) identifying a location of the signal leak; (b) in the vicinity of the signal leak, detecting the BTS signal; (c) determining a level of the BTS signal; (d) defining a threshold level; (e) with the use of a processor, determining whether the level of the BTS signal meets or exceeds the threshold level; and (f) indicating for repair the signal leak if the level of the BTS signal meets or exceeds the threshold level.

主权项

1. A method of using a leakage detector to measure a level of a leak signal leaked from an HFC network and to measure levels of a first plurality of BTS signals transmitted from a base transceiver station in the vicinity of the HFC network, the first plurality of BTS signals being transmitted in a first plurality of BTS channels, respectively, and the leakage detector being tunable over a number of network channels including a first plurality of network channels, the first plurality of BTS channels substantially corresponding in frequency to the first plurality of network channels, respectively, the leakage detector measuring the level of the leak signal and the levels of the first plurality of BTS signals during a detection interval, said method comprising the steps of:
(a) tuning the leakage detector to a high network channel of the number of network channels, to receive the leak signal in the high network channel; (b) at the high network channel and during a first portion of the detection interval, measuring the level of the leak signal; (c) tuning the leakage detector to a first-plurality network channel of the first plurality of network channels, to receive a first-plurality BTS signal of the first plurality of BTS signals, the first-plurality BTS signal being transmitted in a first-plurality BTS channel of the first plurality of BTS channels, the first-plurality BTS channel substantially corresponding in frequency to the first-plurality network channel; (d) at the first-plurality network channel and during the first portion of the detection interval, measuring the level of the first-plurality BTS signal; and (e) repeating steps (c) and (d) for each of the first plurality of network channels, such that a level is measured of each of the first plurality of BTS signals and a first plurality of BTS signal levels is obtained.