Optical Zonu Corporation, a leading provider of RF over fiber (RFoF) transport solutions, has introduced new fiber fault detection and localization capabilities to its CloudView Network Management System (NMS) for the ZONUConnect base transceiver station (BTS) to distributed antenna system (DAS) fiber-optic transport solution. This functionality empowers telecommunication operators and enterprises with significant visibility into RFoF network performance, and the ability to more quickly and accurately detect the location of fiber faults to remediate network issues and avoid downtime.

The ZONUConnect platform includes a proprietary micro-optical time domain reflectometer (uOTDR) embedded within its pluggable modules to showcase fiber fault detection data within a few meters. However, accessing and operationalizing the uOTDR data to triage potential network issues wasn’t seamless with the NMS. New upgrades to the CloudView NMS now allow visual representation of the fiber pass on terrain maps, and the OTDR data to be overlaid on the management panel so operators can now view fiber faults and reflection events with precise map locations.

“The growing reliance on high frequency over-the-air communication, such as 5G, has placed great importance on RFoF networks to transport these frequencies over long distances with no signal loss,” said Meir Bartur, co-founder and CEO of Optical Zonu. “By integrating ZONUConnect’s CloudView NMS with data from our innovative uOTDR modules, it is easier and quicker than ever before to install and maintain increasingly complex BTS to DAS connections and efficiently locate faults and other imperfections.”

The NMS’s ability to provide visualization of preventive fiber events, such as connector or patch-panel imperfections, instead of only fiber breaks, is critical for solving issues that could render a RFoF network non-operational. Even with clean fiber connections, these components can introduce the same amount of loss as a kilometer or more of fiber. Locating these imperfections can help reduce total fiber loss and achieve better performance in a BTS to DAS link.