Cable Testing 101: There's No Gain with "Gainers"

-Mark Mullins

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Cable Testing 101: There's No Gain with "Gainers"

Akin to water flowing from a small pipe into a large pipe, gainers
are essentially perceived increases in optical power that occur at
splice points due to variations in fiber characteristics, including
core diameter, numerical apertures, mode field diameters and
backscatter coefficients.
Since gainers can be a significant source of confusion for
new optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) users, let's take a
look at why these occur, what impact they have and how to avoid
them.

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Cable Testing 101: There's No Gain with "Gainers"

What are the Causes?

Gainers can show up when using an OTDR to measure loss from one end of a fiber
link, and they occur due to the way in which an OTDR measures reflected light
along the length of the fiber. An OTDR assumes that fiber characteristics such as
core and cladding size are consistent along the length with no variations, and it
calculates signal loss based on the amount of reflected light, or backscatter, that it
detects.
But even if two connected fibers are the same type of fiber, they may not
necessarily be cut from the same length of fiber so variations can still occur,
including different backscatter coefficients (a fancy term for information about
the relative backscatter level of the fiber). And that means that the fiber used for
the launch and receive cords of the OTDR may also have a different backscatter
coefficient than the fiber under test.
Different backscatter coefficients can cause more light to be
backscattered after a connection than before the connection, causing the OTDR
to show a loss value that is less than it actually is--a gainer.
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Cable Testing 101: There's No Gain with "Gainers"

Why Is It a Problem?

The term "gainer" makes it seem like you are actually gaining something, and you might think
that ending up with a lower than actual loss value is a good thing. Think again. Gainers ultimately don't
gain you anything but headaches and increased cost.
When loss results are lower than they actually are, you might be under the misconception that
there is plenty of headroom to add another connection point, extend the distance or simply guarantee
performance. But gainers are false positives that when taken as true, can result in the fiber link
ultimately not supporting the application.
For example, an OM4 150-meter channel has a maximum channel loss of 1.5dB to support 40
gigabit per second speeds (40GBASE-SR4). If you're measured loss comes in at 1.3dB, you might think
it's okay to add another 0.2dB connector. But what if your measured loss includes a gainer, and the
actual loss of the channel is really closer to 1.4dB? Now you end up with a customer asking you to
come back and troubleshoot the installation to determine why they're not getting the data rate they
should.

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Cable Testing 101: There's No Gain with "Gainers"

How Do You Prevent It?

Preventing gainers from impacting the quality of your installation is

actually quite simple. That's because wherever there's a gainer, there's a loser.
That's right. While transmitting in one direction may cause the gainer, when the
measurement is taken in the other direction where less light is backscattered
after the connection, the measured loss is greater than the actual loss.
The simple solution, and the one required by industry standards, is to
measure in both directions--otherwise known as bidirectional testing. As shown
here, when the OTDR trace with the gainer is averaged with the trace of the loser,
the result is the actual loss.
Fluke Networks makes this even easier. To reduce the cost and time
involved in measuring from both ends, our OptiFiber Pro or DSX-5000
CableAnalyzer Pro feature a built-in SmartLoop Assistant that uses a loop at
the remote end of a duplex fiber link, allowing you to test in both directions from
one end. It also features on-board averaging of the two measurements to provide
an accurate final loss measurement.
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 Thank You!

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