Predicting the Actual Location of Faults in Underground Optical Networks
using Linear Regression
Abstract
Optical cables are enormous transmission media which carries high-speed
data across transatlantic, intercontinental, international boundaries
and cities. The optical cable is essential in data communication. The
cable has become an indispensable component in optical communications
infrastructure; hence, conscious efforts are always adopted to prevent
or minimize faults in the optical network infrastructure. Typically,
tracing fault in the underground optical network has been difficult even
though optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) has been used to measure
the distance of faults in the underground fiber cable. The methodologies
deployed in the reviewed literature indicate a vast gap between the
fault distance measured by the OTDR and the actual distance of fault.
This paper observed the difficulties involved in tracing the actual spot
of fault in the underground optical networks. The difficulty of tracing
these underground faults mostly result in an undue delay and loss of
revenue. This research presents a machine learning (ML) approach to
predict the actual location of a fiber cable fault in an underground
optical transmission link. Linear regression in the python sci-kit learn
library was used to predict the actual location of a fault in an
underground optical network. The MSE and MAE evaluation matrix used
provided good accuracy results of 0.061291 and 0.080143, respectively.
The result obtained in this paper indicates that faults in underground
optical networks can be found quickly to avoid the delays in the fault
tracing process, which leads to an excessive revenue loss.