Research on the Minimal-OTDR-Module Configuration Strategy for N-1 Contingency Resilience in Intelligent Optical Distribution Network

In the intelligent optical distribution network, based on the characteristics of fiber core patching, OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectometer) module can be configured at selected substations to achieve global monitoring of the power communication optical network. This paper researches the selection policy of OTDR configuration points in a power communication optical network equipped with the intelligent optical distribution system, in order to achieve the minimum number of OTDR modules to meet the monitoring requirements for N-1 fault resilience in the network. This paper proposes a maximum optical cable weight-based search, the weight assignment rules for optical cables are defined based on the importance of optical paths or services carried by their fiber cores, and OTDR modules are sequentially configured at substations with the highest cable weights. The network simulations spanning 10 to 300 nodes were performed in MATLAB environment, where the maximum-cable-weight search algorithm was comparatively evaluated against both sequential search and maximum-coverable-cable-length search approaches. The method efficiently achieves minimal OTDR module configuration with N-1 fault resilience in intelligent optical distribution networks.