OTDR Set-Up - Averaging

All OTDRs regardless of brand have four basic setup requirement i.e. the OTDR user is required to key in these four basic data parameters into OTDR in order to get good and accurate fiber trace analysis.

The required data parameters are :-

1. Testing Range - Refer Article HERE
   
2. Pulse Width - Refer Article HERE
   
3. Index of Refraction - Refer Article HERE
4. Averaging Time

What is Averaging ?

Averaging refers to time taken to have a good OTDR traces as shown below.

However, the longer averaging time would provide better OTDR traces but it wil be time consuming for OTDR to provide such traces.

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The before averaging  or low averaging is sufficient should the end-user only interested to find out the approximate fiber optics link distance.

The about right averaging is able to provide good measurement loss.

The higher averaging time provides better OTDR traces but OTDR takes extra times to do the averaging and display better traces.

The end-user is required to set the averaging time in order to get good  test measurement results