Passive optical repeater bypass for optical fiber systems

摘要

A passive fiber optic repeater bypass is provided which brings fault tolerance to repeatered fiber optic transmission systems. A fiber optic bypass provides an alternate signal path around failed repeaters. The bypass optical attenuation is set to ensure the bypass signal is sufficiently small so as not to interfere with the locally regenerated and transmitted signal, but sufficiently large to be received at the next repeater. In the event of a repeater failure, a repeater monitor disables the local laser transmitter allowing the bypass signal to be received at the next repeater.