METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR OBTAINING STATUS INFORMATION CONCERNING OPTICAL AMPLIFIERS LOCATED ALONG AN UNDERSEA OPTICAL TRANSMISSION LINE USING COTDR

摘要

A method is provided for locating a fault arising in one or more optical amplifiers from among a plurality of optical amplifiers operating in saturation and located along an optical transmission path. The method begins by generating a COTDR trace representing a backscattered and/or reflected optical power level along the transmission path and comparing the COTDR trace to a previously obtained reference COTDR trace to generate a difference trace that represents a change in gain. The change in gain is assigned to at least one of the plurality of optical amplifiers based on the difference trace.