Demonstration of a Gb/S Transceiver with OTDR Built-in-Test for Avionics Local Area Networks

The motivations for development of an integrated BITed transceiver have been described in previous DASC papers (Beranek and Van Deven, 2005). One of the challenges in developing BIT capabilities in avionics local area networks is implementing the BITed transceiver functionality without degrading the transceiver's electro-optic performance characteristics, or increasing its size, or changing its multi-source agreement (MSA) standard footprint format. We have successfully demonstrated the first prototype Gb/s fiber optic transceiver with integrated built-in test 10-cm resolution OTDR capability in a small-form-factor (SFF) package. This OTDR BITed transceiver operates at 850 nm with high output power and good electro-optic characteristics over 2 Gb/s. The 10-cm optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) resolution requires the transceiver to have total rise time (t
_r
) and fall time (t
_f
) less than 1 ns. This rise and fall time requirement indicates the intrinsic transceiver has to support a 2.5 Gb/s data rate