Estimation of Measurement Error of Attenuation Coefficient of Optical Fibers in Rayleigh's Scattering Reflectometry

The paper presents the results of a study of the effect of signal amplitude fluctuations on the measurement error of the attenuation coefficient of optical fibers of small length made by Rayleigh incoherent reflectometers. Based on the analysis of signal processing in a reflectometer, using methods of statistical radio engineering, and involving experimental data and empirical techniques, it is shown that the value of measurement error of attenuation coefficient is determined by the number of uncorrelated counts of the reflectogram used for averaging, taking into account the nature of fluctuations, with restrictions imposed on the signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver input. A method of consideration for the effect of fading during birefringence fluctuations is proposed based on an analogy with the radar task of estimating the parameters of detecting a fluctuating target.