IoT Based Underground Optical Fiber Cable Fault Detecting System

Murugesh P D 1, Damini R 2, Amitha P 3, Shwetha M 4

Assistant Professor 4, UG scholar 1, 2, 3, Dept. of EEE, Sri Venkateshwara College of Engineering, Bengaluru, India
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

used to measure other units. [2] This paper introduced

Abstract - Optical fiber cables are very well tested Robotic Platform for configuring underground cable
before burying it underground, but in contrary they are systems. The author explained that Robotic sensor has
prone to problems as they are quite fragile. This fault been developed for checking underground, power
detecting system is used find the fault in the optical distribution cable systems. In future it is possible to
fiber line across the customer sides. The received power include signal acquisition, data fusion and signal
supply in optical fiber is monitored by laser output processing based on sensors information. [3] This paper
power using microcontroller. Any instantaneous introduced the model of fault location for underground
change in the power of optical line is detected and the power cable using microcontroller. In this author detects
fault message is unveiled through Wi-Fi using IoT. The the exact location of fault in short circuit. [4] This paper
microcontroller is operated in low power mode to save introduced Underground Cable fault detecting system
power consumption. Exact location of the fault using Aurdino. Author examined to identify the distance
occurred in the optical fiber line is shown. of underground cable fault from base station in
Key words: Optical fiber line/cable, laser, fault kilometers using Aurdino board. This greatly reduces the
detection, IoT. time and operates effectively. In this it is possible to
detect the location of open circuit fault. Location of the
I. INTRODUCTION fault is detected from the server unit.

Fiber optics communication is developed immensely III. CIRCUIT DIAGRAM

in the past two decades. It is seen much lower
interference and attenuation in optical fibers compared to
copper wires. The fiber is a strand of silica based glass
protected with a transparent cladding. The information is
transmitted through the fiber in the form of monochrome
light over great distances at a high data rates.
Telecommunication companies are now opting mostly
for optical fibers for telephone/internet connections as
they are very efficient. Good efficiency comes with
unusual faults which are quite rare in optical fiber cables
but when they do occur this intelligent fault detection
system could be applicable. From this fault detection
system, fiber is monitored which is prone to many
numbers of parameters including current, temperature,
Power supply, transmitted power, received power. In this
project optical fiber is monitored by received power
supply. To know exact location of the fault is our main
aim. Therefore this is developed through IoT where the
location of fault is detected.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

There are many related studies based on optical fiber
fault detection. [1] This paper introduced passive optical Fig.1.1: Circuit of PIC16F877A controller board
network based on some issues in wireless fiber to the
In our project the PIC (16F877A) controller will act as
home building for fault detection. Nowadays optical fiber
brain of the controlling device in the set up. It is one of
is used as media to design a network that is short and
the most advanced microcontrollers from Microchip. One
long network and it supports great bandwidth. The author
of the major advantages of PIC controller is that the data
explained the planning of optical network on basis of
can be written or erased as many times as possible
wireless fiber to the home building. In Future, it is useful
because it uses FLASH memory technology. It is a 40
to investigate other parameters of optical network and
pin microcontroller in which 33 pins are for input and
output. It has two 8 bit and one 16 Bit timer. It also Fig. 2.2: Receiver unit
consists of capture and compares modules, serial ports,
parallel ports and five input/output ports. We use the 12V
DC adapter for giving power supply to the controller
board.

Fig. 2.3: Server unit

The block diagram consists of three units namely:

1. Transmission unit
2. Receiver unit
3. Server unit
1. Transmission unit
Fig. 1.2: Circuit of ARM Controller board
In transmission unit (Fig. 2.1) switches are connected as
ARM is known as advanced Risk machine line 1, line 2, and line 3. Adapter is used to activate
Microcontroller. It is a 32 bit controller. Its operating PIC16F877A microcontroller and hence switches, laser,
voltage is 3.3V.it has frequency of 60 Hz. when this is LCD gets activated through Microcontroller. LCD
compared to 8051 microcontroller this has internal displays the title of project. Laser transmits
peripherals like 10bit and 2 ADC. It consists of 64 pins. monochromatic light in order to transmit data to optical
It consists of 2 UART. ARM is an architecture used in fiber. Optical fiber carries light signals.
many processors and microcontrollers. ARM is also
known as LPC that is low power consumption controller. 2. Receiver unit
It can be used as general purpose and for Bi-directional In receiver unit (Fig. 2.2) adapter is used to activate
output. When compare to other Microcontroller this has LPC2148 Microcontroller and hence optical fiber, LDR
more storage which is advantage for project. sensor, ADC gets activated through microcontroller.
BLOCK DIAGRAM Optical fiber is given as input to another
Microcontroller unit. Optical fiber is connected to LDR
sensor. LDR sensor is connected to analog digital
converter. LCD connected displays the fault occurred.
3. Server unit
In server unit (Fig. 2.3) if fault occurs in Line 1, Line
2, Line 3. GPS determines the exact location and this
message are automatically sent to mobile phone and
laptop through TCP client app.
IV. FAULT DETECTION AND
Fig. 2.1: Transmission unit
RECTIFICATION PROCESS
Optical fiber fault detection and rectification consists
of two phases: I) Fault Detection Phase and II) Fault
Rectification Phase.
The process of Optical fiber fault detection and
rectification has two different phases: I) Fault Detection
Phase: This phase is to locate the place where optical
fiber cable (OFC) has been cut due to some reason like
construction of road. The instrument which is used for
this is called OTDR (Optical Time Domain
Reflectmeter). II) Fault Rectification Phase: This phase
 is to make OFC join with a minimal spice loss. The
instrument used for joining is called fusion splicer. Let
us understand it with an example. Assume there are two
telephone exchanges A and B which are located at a Earth
distance of D from each other. Both the telephone OFC
exchanges are connected to each other through an
New OFC
optical fiber link. Now to some reason the OFC which
connects A and B has been cut. After the OFC breaks Fig. 3.3: Adding new cable
between A &B, the optical fiber transmission
Both the ends of the new cable are jointed with the
equipment‘s installed at A& B start displaying visual
broken ends of old cable. The instrument which is used to
alarms. After noticing the visual alarms it is assumed
make OFC joint is called fusion splicer or splicing
that the OFC break between A’&B’. . To verify this
machine. The OFC joints are cover by joint closure box.
assumption or to know the actual place of OFC break,
Then the joint closure boxes are placed under the digs
OTDR is connected to fiber at A or B or both and the
and digs are filled with earth.
length of fiber is measured. There can be only two
possibilities
Earth
1. The length of fiber (Y) = D which means there
OFC
is no OFC break.
NEW OFC
2. The length of fiber (Y) < D which means OFC JOINT CLOSURE
BOX
has been broken.
Once the length of fiber Y is known which is less than Fig. 3.4: New OFC and Joint closure.
D because the OFC has been broken. Now to rectify the The communication between A and B starts again as the
OFC break fault, the distance X (X = Y) from A is OFC fault is corrected. Now the distance between A and
measured along the OFC route on the road through B = D + The length of the new fiber.
distance meter or any vehicle.
V. METHODOLOGY
The main idea of this paper is to perform real time
monitoring on underground optical fiber and to detect if
there is any breakage in optical fiber cable. In IoT based
Underground optical fiber cable fault detecting system is
an effective method to analyze various faults in optical
Fig. 3.1: OFC Break
fiber cable and automatic message will be sent to the
Fig 3.1: OFC break after reaching at the distance of monitoring person. In Transmission unit, PIC 16F877A
X‘, two digs are made at both the sides of the cut at an Microcontroller gets activated through adapter via 5V
approximate distance of 1020 meters‘. The distance supply. Switches connected to Microcontroller are taken
between dig and the cut should not be very large as Line 1, Line 2, and Line 3. LCD is initialized along
otherwise it becomes difficult to pull the broken cable. with the display of the project title. Laser gets activated
Digs in order to transmit data on optical cable. Optical cable
carries light signals from laser.
Earth In Receiver unit, the optical fiber is given as input to
OFC another microcontroller unit i.e. LPC 2148. The optical
OFC Break fiber carries data in the form of light. The received data
will be sensed by LDR sensor. LDR sensor converts light
Fig. 3.2: OFC break signals to electrical signals. LDR output is fed to ADC.
After making two digs we pull the broken cable out from ADC converts an Analog signal into digital signal. The
both the digs and laid a new cable between both the digs. digital values will be displayed on LCD. If the digital
values are equal to threshold value then it is displayed
as” LINE 1 OK”. If the digital values are less than
threshold value then the fault is detected and is displayed
as “LINE 2 FAULT OCCURRED”.
 VI. FLOW CHART In the project IoT based underground optical fiber
cable fault detecting system there are two modules
The flow chart of IoT based Underground Optical fiber
namely transmission module and receiver module. In
fault detecting system is as shown in Fig. 4
transmission module the source of the supply is micro
controller. This microcontroller controls all the
components which are present in transmission side.
In the side there is a display unit which displays the title
of the project. When switches are activated, the laser
light signals are transmitted by the principle of Total
Internal Reflection through an optical fiber and it reaches
the receiver side.
In the receiver side, LDR sensor senses laser light
signals which are coming out from the optical fiber.
Depending upon the intensity of light, the fault is
calculated and the amounts of faults are displayed in the
receiver part. The basic faults here are bending loss,
alignment loss, and design loss. The faults which are
occurring can be seen in a phone as well as in a system.
If the optical fiber has a fault or the fiber is ok, it displays
in the display unit, system as well as in the phones.

Fig. 4: Flow chart of IoT based Underground optical fiber fault

detecting system.

VII. HARDWARE RESULT

In the project IoT based underground optical fiber
cable fault detecting system there are two modules
namely transmission module and receiver module.
In transmission module the source of the supply is
micro controller. This micro controller controls all the
components which are present in transmission side. In the
side there is a display unit which displays the title of the Fig.5: Hardware kit
project. When switches are activated, the laser light VIII. CONCLUSION
signals are transmitted by the principle of Total Internal
Reflection through an optical fiber and it reaches the From this project it is possible to simplify the actual
receiver side. problem of detecting faults and find where the actual
In the receiver side, LDR sensor senses laser light fault has occurred by finding the exact position or
signals which are coming out from the optical fiber. locations in latitude longitude form and also find the
Depending upon the intensity of light, the fault is accurate distance of breaker points. By using software’s
calculated and the amounts of faults are displayed in the can encrypt the land transfer at controlling section and
receiver part. The basic faults here are bending loss, actual action will be working out.
alignment loss, and design loss. The faults which are
occurring can be seen in a phone as well as in a system. IX. FUTURE SCOPE
If the optical fiber has a fault or the fiber is ok, it displays
in the display unit, system as well as in the phones.
 In future, this programme must be improved to
investigate other parameters of the optical line and able
to measure other units. Locating fiber fault within the
FTTH network becomes more significant due to the
increasing demand for reliable service delivery.

X. REFERENCES

[1] Underground Cable Fault Detection and Identification via

Fourier analysis by Abhishek Pandey and Nicolas H.
Younan, 978-1-4244-8286-3/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE,
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Issues in Wireless Fiber to the Home Architecture for
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IlaVennila, R. Vaishnavi, and Springer Science Business
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[3] Underground Cable Fault Detection Using
Microcontroller by Swapnil Gaikwad, Hemant Pawar,
Ajay Jadhav, Vidhut Kumar, Prof.A.A.Rane, IJARIIE-
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R.R. S.B.P.C.O.E., Indapur, Novateur Publications
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