D2 01- A07 OPTICAL CABLES MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR 500KV HVAC NETWORKS

CARLOS ALBERTO DI PALMA TRANELSA CONSULTORA SA ARGENTINA ARIEL CAMPOS TRANSENER SA ARGENTINA GUILLERMO GALARZA ABB SA ARGENTINA

KEYWORDS Fiber optic; wavelength; macrobending; microbending; reflection; refractive index; dark fibers SUMMARY Transener Company is responsible of the Argentinas 500kV High Voltage Transmission System, and consequently it has a vast optical cables network that is installed along the whole country. The network has 5300 km of optical cables installed, as well as an important amount of other optical cables under project development. More than 95% of their optical cables are OPGW type, and the rest are ADSS ones. See drawings of whole existing network Additionally, it is necessary to take into account that the services of Transeners HV optical network are connected with services of other HV optical networks of: Other 500, 330, 220 kV HV Transmission Operators Generation Plants HV trunk distributors (sub-transmission) in order to do: Remote supervision of HV networks Data and trip transmission for stabilizing resources like generation and load shedding (DAG/DAC system) Connection of digital telephony trunks for HV operating actions Data interchange with other countries where HV interconnections are installed All these features are vital in order to have a National Interconnected HV System with high Reliability figure. Nowadays, taking into account the importance of the Transeners 500kV HV System, there are installed several remote management systems (NMS) as follows: NMS for SDH digital communication systems by optical fibers NMS for digital teleprotection system NMS for SHF digital radiolinks NMS for private automatic exchanges (PABX) networks NMS for optical amplifier chain (when it is applicable) Overall NMS The only component that is not currently being supervised is the fiber optic cable. And that is the motivation to plan a remote monitoring system that will supervise the complete cable installed base. We will name this system like Optical Cables Management System-OCMS BENEFITS The optical cables management system will represent a benefit to the whole optical network due to the following features: Permanent and continue management of the whole optical cables network Reduction of failure detection time (minutes) 1 Optical cables management system for 500kV networks-v.3 D2 01- A07

Reduction of failure location time (minutes), as well as the failure restoration time (hours), taking into account the accurate and precise information provided by the system Increase of the Total Annual Availability (Ai) of the whole optical cables network because the irreversible failure rate (TIF) will be minimal due to the early detection of the performance degradation and its consequent preventive actions Reduction of costs of the preventive maintenance tasks (currently done by periodical measurements with OTDR portable instruments) Warranty of the right in-service condition of the optical cables and their included fibers Maximization of the level of utilization of the communication systems and/or the services transported by them To allow the interrelation between Transeners geographical documentation (GIS) and the performance of the optical cable network Reduction of critical failures due to the permanent and continue monitoring, and consequently improving the quality of service (QoS) performance of the HV Network Online checking of new optical cables installation quality during their start-up process Auditing repair quality (that are done by Transeners subcontractors)

FAILURES The failures can be classified as follows: a) Non-critical failures These failures are characterized by: The attenuation factor is greater than the originally measured during the start-up process Thresholds set for attenuation factor, and/or other parameters, are overtaken It is modified the emitted optical power level experiences variation over the time Cable deformation due to excessive strain (i.e. terminal hanging off) Cable deformation due to excessive flexion (i.e. galloping effect due to ice fall down) b) Critical failures Characterized by: An optical power reduction of 3dB under the determined threshold for any fiber of each optical cable Increase of Hydrogen absorption in the optical cable and/or splice boxes Loss of end-to-end signals Maximum reflection figures are exceeded Fiber break c) Extrinsic factors It means external mechanisms that interact with the optical cable and can affect their fibers. c1) macro-bending Optical cable curves can affect the refraction index of the fibers, as well as the critical angle of the light ray, and consequently producing diffraction of the light in the core (towards the cladding). Moreover, the installation procedure could not rightly control the installation parameters like pulling, mechanical strain, bending radius of pulley, etc, as well as not to have a permanent supervision during the installation process. The entire mentioned item can increase the probability of failures. c2) micro-bending The pressure over the optical fibers can produce non viewable effects, but they can affect the performance of fibers due to non perceptible deterioration by micro-bending effect. c3) temperature effect The temperature range where the optical cable will act, as well as the projected over length of fibers into the cable, could produce contractions and/or straightening of fibers, that will produce located micro-bending effects. These effects can
return (or not) to the original right conditions (hysteresis effect). Nevertheless, that situation has not happened in the Transeners optical network

d) Threshold values The threshold levels for alarm generation are shown in a preliminary way in Table I.1 of ITU-T L.40 standard, and they can be acceptable for the project stage. It may be adapted later in accordance to the mode of operation of the Utility Company

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For long haul optical links the optical reserve margin is small. Consequently, it is mandatory to control any small variation in the fiber optic attenuation because it could represent a critical situation. QUALITY OF SERVICE (QoS) a) Main aspects Up to now, in order to assure the quality of service of the Utility Company, the optical cables and their fibers were carefully taken into account during all the project and work stages, as follows: Performing type tests in well known and recognized laboratories Doing factory acceptance tests (FAT) to 100% of the optical cable spools, as well as to 100% of the fibers Doing site acceptance tests (SAT) to 100% of the fibers, with a complete set of detailed protocols Currently, Transener does not have a monitoring system of their optical fibers/cables. Therefore the failure detection is indirect: Alarm detection through SDH system Switch to other fiber route (section protection) of the same optical cable Switch to other independent route (path protection) that will be different of the optical way The HV Network of Transener is very critical mainly due to: Extra long haul distances Extra high voltage level of 500kV Trunk HV network for the whole country For those reasons the proposed optical cable monitoring and supervision system can obtain the main following advantages: Reduction of troubleshooting time (early and precise location) Reduction of out of service period of cables and systems (perception of degradation) Reduction of catastrophic failures rate (preventive recognition of degradation) Reduction of maintenance costs (preventive actions before than corrective ones) After the development and explosive growth of the optical network, it is decided to shift the focus into the quality of service (QoS) and the maintenance costs. The main issues are the following: To reduce the maintenance costs To increase the knowledge of the optical network in real time To increase the Availability (Ai) of the whole communication systems To increase the Reliability (Ri) of the services (protection, stabilizing resources, etc) that are transmitted by the communication systems Consequently, it is necessary to go ahead with the next stage that must include: Monitoring of normal behavior of the optical cable network Preventive maintenance in case of an eventual degradation Monitoring of the maintenance tasks In case of failure, to do a fast and precise localization of it It is necessary to control the following events: Optical fiber degradation: measurement of total attenuation exceeding limit values Breaking situation: measurement of fiber length and comparison with the original length Splice damage: measurement of splice losses exceeding limit values Water admission: measurement of H2 absorption (splice boxes, etc) b) Integration requirement It is essential to point out that the integration concept of the whole work must be mandatory in order to assure an optimized solution between: Optical cable Cable accessories Right engineering process 3 Optical cables management system for 500kV networks-v.3 D2 01- A07

Installation experienced task groups Fiber splicing by specialized people The monitoring system is a control of the well done both, implemented solution and installation tasks. The monitoring system has not come to replace the right implementation to be obtained by Main Contractors. c) Preventive maintenance The process of failure in a galvanized steel cable of a conventional HV guard cable is different that what happen in an OPGW cable, due to: In metallic cable the failure will be evidenced for a cut and fall down effects (critical failure) In an optical cable the failure will begin with evidences like:: *increasing of fiber optic losses (step by step) *straightening and/or deformation of fibers (tendency) *humidity admission into the optical cable (modification) Consequently, there is an essential advantage in case of having a NMS optical cables monitoring system. In case of considering a monitoring system with periodic preventive maintenance cycles, it must develop an automatic sequential interrogation process (polling) looking for eventual degradations, and consequently generating state reports that will be later analyzed by O&M area of the HV Transporter d) Corrective maintenance As soon as a malfunction is detected in the optical cable, it will be generated: An alarm A malfunction report (event) The geographical location of the event, according to GIS system According with that information will begin an immediate lot of actions, with the consequent increase in the quality of service, as follows: It is decided the most convenient maintenance organization and the beginning of the repair process It is re-routed the data traffic through other acceptable communication way, with a minimum bit error rate (BER), like other optical cable, radiolink alternative, etc e) Work maintenance auditing It is possible to verify the quality level of optical cables maintenance work that is made by subcontractors. It is made by comparing the original values saved on the start-up process with the values that optical cables will have during their life period. It means to monitor performance changes in real time. OTDR AND BACKSCATTERING TECHNIQUE The Optical Time Domain Reflectometer is designed to detect the Rayleigh backscattering level along the fiber link. A little amount of this scattering that is determined by the acceptance angle will return to the coupling point and be measured. The OTDR measures backscattered signals which are much smaller than the signal previously sent to the fiber. Taking into account the scattered power and the propagation time in the fiber, the instrument draws a diagram that shows the attenuation factor along the whole fiber link. It is necessary to take into account that fiber length could not fully characterized during the recovery time immediately after a saturated period that is called the dead zone (IEC 61746) OTDR module is capable of: fault location and analysis of fiber system attenuation, rate of attenuation, distance, etc, measurements reflectance (as ratio of reflected power to incident power of an event/connector/splice) measurement additional features like automatic event detection, table of events, optical return loss, trace overlay/overlap data storage capability additional functionalities like light source, power meter See Figure BB Large mode fields are less sensitive to lateral offset during splicing, but they are more sensitive to losses produced by bending during either installation or cabling processes. a) : 1310 nm will be generally used for measurement of splice and connector losses b) : 1550 nm is more sensitive to bends (called as macro-bending that will be considered later) 4 Optical cables management system for 500kV networks-v.3 D2 01- A07

See Figure CC Considering that OTDR determines the distance to the event on time, the refractive index serves as a correlation factor between time and distance, allowing the OTDR to display distances. But, if the refractive index (from fiber manufacturer data sheet) is known, it can be entered to the OTDR in order to improve the accuracy of the optical distance displayed. Additionally, it is normal that the length of the fiber is greater than the length of the optical cable. Then, the physical distance can vary from the optical distance. It is desirable that the OTDR to displays cable distance instead optical distance. Then, it is necessary to enter to the OTDR data base, the effective refractive index (RIeff) that was adjusted for fiber over length. Consequently:

Effective refractive index >> RIeff = [ Lopt * RIopt ] / Leff

where: Leff: optical cable distance (by GPS measurement between two well known points) Lopt: optical fiber distance between two events (by OTDR measurement) RIopt: refractive index (provided by fiber manufacturer) Main features of OTDR must be as follows: dead zone of events: 5 m @1625/1650 nm dead zone of attenuation: 10 m @1625/1650 nm dynamic range: 50 dB wavelength alternatives: 1310, 1490, 1550, 1625/1650 nm measurement distances: about 250km precision of distance: order of meters During the detailed project stage the full description must be done MONITORING PROCEDURES 1) In order to monitor the quality of service of the optical cable it is possible to adopt the criterion of monitoring all fibers of the whole cable. a) That means that the monitoring process must co-exist with the transmission of information in the same fibers. Consequently, optical filters as well as WDM multiplexers must be used in order to handle the monitoring wavelength m with the signal wavelength j of the communication system, without interfering each other. See Figure I.2 Summarizing, the following equipment must be included: optical filters in the communication systems, in order to avoid the interference of m with the useful j optical filters in the OTDR circuit in order to avoid the interference of j in the measurement process b) Taking into account that the existing SDH systems are in-service, the before mentioned adaptations will interrupt the service in involved fibers. The proposed procedure will be the following: re-route the traffic by other way test of the system after its modifications start-up process of the modified system in order to return to the original traffic and/or route c) In order to avoid interferences between j y m wavelengths, the optical power of the signal to be used by the measurement instrument OTDR must be at least -60dB under the optical signal used by the communication system within the overlapping spectrum. d) It is important to mention that the insertion of filters and multiplexers adds attenuation to the link and therefore it will be total undesirable in the case of long haul existing links. 2) In order to monitor the quality of service of optical cables, it is possible to adopt the criterion of monitoring dark fibers that are not used by useful transmission. In such case it is not necessary (exceptions that will be seen later) neither to install optical switches in order to verify all fibers of the optical cable, nor install optical filters in the enlighten fibers. Consequently, the monitoring system will not interact with the communication system that is transmitting in the enlighten fibers. See Figure I.1 5 Optical cables management system for 500kV networks-v.3 D2 01- A07

Due to this monitoring style, these main advantages are obtained: low cost of implementation no existence of interferences with the useful wavelengths no necessity to do adaptations in systems that are in-service possibility to use any m monitoring wavelength On the other hand, this option shortens the delay time for detecting degradation or failures events, due to the fact that it is not necessary to have a measurement cycle of every fibers in the cable. The Server located in O&M area will do the analysis of the OTDRs graph/trace together with additional information coming from the NMS system of the SDH communication system. Consequently, it is possible to do optimal actions in order to do the best repair as well as to recover rapidly the degraded system It must be taken into account that the dark fiber monitoring style will detect 85% of possible failures in the optical cable, due to the fact that most of the failures will happen in the whole optical cable, and they will not happen in a particular fiber alone. Of course monitoring of all fibers will detect 100% of failures and performance degradations (but with the above mentioned problems) 3) The monitoring options can be: permanent and continue monitoring periodic monitoring (monthly, daily, etc) By using dark fibers monitoring it is easy to implement a permanent and continue monitoring real time process. 4) it is suitable to design the optical cable monitoring system like a great management system in order to allow future addition of new monitoring stations, and/or new optical cables, without any changes in the installed monitoring system (to assure scalability performance) REMOTE FIBER MONITORING SYSTEM The monitoring system will be as it is visualized in Figure DD. It will be mainly composed as follow: a) Remote measurement unit (RMU) Devices that are part of the remote measurement unit: optical coupler that permit the injection and extraction of light signal to/from the dark fiber optical switch automatically controlled that can select between monitoring dark fiber # 1 (main) and dark fiber # 2 (backup monitoring fiber) on all supervised cables in the Node in case of monitoring of enlighten fibers, it will be used an optical switch for 12, 24, 50 fibers optical measurement unit that includes OTDR multitest module, as well as light source emitter, optical power meter the OTDR module is remotely controlled and provides the optical signals for measurement, as well as to draw a reflection graphs by bidirectional tests. Several wavelengths will be used within the OTDR dynamic range, as detailed before the controller and data processor (CPU) will do, among others, the following functions: * control of the whole measurement process * storage of the measured data * analysis of the obtained results * communication with the remote Server through the existing communication systems (SDH fiber optic System; SHF digital radiolink)

Additionally, a low reflection termination unit will be located at the final end of the dark fiber in order to allow the right OTDR reflection measurements, as well as the sensors to be decided (that it will be analyzed later) The mentioned 5300 km of the Transeners optical cable network must be divided in several Management Remote Nodes (MRN), each of one will do the monitoring of several optical cables, depending on the Substation where the Node will be located. The specific arrangement must be analyzed during the project stage. An example could be: Node located at Choele Choel site: monitoring of three optical cables (ChChoel-BBlanca; ChChoel-PAguila; ChChoel-PMadryn) 6 Optical cables management system for 500kV networks-v.3 D2 01- A07

Node located at Cobos site: monitoring of three optical cables (Cobos-Bracho; Cobos-Sanjuancito; CobosMQuemado) Node located at Colonia Elia site: monitoring of two optical cables (CElia-Belgrano; CElia-Mercedes) The installation of new MRN nodes, as well as some new optical cables that can be incorporated in the existing nodes, will be easily implemented. The immediate automatic beginning of monitoring tasks of the new node and/or the new optical cable will be warranted (assured scalability). The controller/data processor (CPU) will include data of dark fibers to be used, as well as the original and right reflection graph that corresponds to the specific monitoring optical fiber. Each later measurement will be compare with the original one (as reference), and it will be analyzed through an algorithm of failure automatic tracking In case of more than one optical cable (to different directions) in the same MRN node, the controller/data processor will do the simultaneous control of several RMU units (assigned each one to a particular/specific optical cable) The controller/data processor (CPU) will include a dual LAN Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000 Base-T) interface in order to be linked with the SDH and SHF radiolink multiplexers located in the Substation where the MRN node will be installed. By the mentioned communication links, the MRN node will send the information to the remote management center (RMC below described) by using a TCP/IP protocol, through a dedicated service channel of each multiplexer (duplicated sending). b) Remote management center (RMC) It will be formed by a Server that will centralize the information of several MRN nodes, as well as storage the whole information of all optical cables in its Data Base. The Server will manage all the collected information and will do the consequent maintenance actions, giving alerts, etc, to the O&M area. The measurement information will be included in the geographical system (GIS) that Transener normally use for his whole HV network. Consequently, the event of optical cable failures as well as their main features will be precisely located. The RMC Center will be suitable for processing the OTDR`s measurements and traces, as well as the rest of information of each MRN node, like optical cable, dark fiber, date, etc. Consequently, the failed optical cable as well as the failure location, place, etc, will be shown immediately, in spite of the network location where the event have happened The range of the measurement must be as follows: Optimal coverage: up to 100% of the whole cable length Acceptable coverage: between 7080% of the whole cable length Additionally, it would be necessary that the MRN remote nodes can use internet protocol for managing the remote installed devices through a simple network management protocol SNMP. It means to use the same management servers nowadays used by the SDH system. It will allow to do the management from anywhere by means of specific level access by each user. c) Process failure detection: in case of an optical fiber/cable performance degradation, the Remote Unit (RMU) will send an alarm to the Server (RMC), together with its related information (date, time, failure characteristic, location, etc) processing: the Server will register the failure/degradation event received and send a notification to the O&M office with all details collected about it information: additionally to the GIS failure location, it will be possible to open several lapels with information like: * splice details * specific span (between two splice boxes) * end-to-end optical link * monitoring dark fiber (main dark fiber; backup one) d) Sensors They are necessary in order to verify the optical fibers/cables performance. d1) humidity detection 7 Optical cables management system for 500kV networks-v.3 D2 01- A07

These sensors are based on the Hydrogen absorption, and they include a hydro-absorbent material that it will expand causing a fiber loss due to a consequent macrobending of the fiber d2) stress detection These are fibre optic distributed strain and temperature sensors for monitoring mechanical stress. They permit to do high resolution measurement, as well as to do the measurement for long distance links. These sensors are based on Brillouin effect, and can measure simultaneously, both temperature and mechanical stress on optical standard fibres according to ITU-T G.652. See Figure EE e) Measurement traces The MNR node, as it was detailed above, uses an OTDR module multitest in order to measure the features of the optical fibers/cables that undertake to the node. Each event of the link that could cause a reflection will be drawn on an OTDR trace, giving the information related to that event: attenuation measurement reflections produced discontinuities etc The failures will be represented by reflections, due to several situations like: misalignment between optical cables and light emitter failures due to microbending located in splicing boxes presence of dust in optical connectors cut in fibers macrobending of the optical cable (*) The last mentioned situation (*) of failure that is produced by external actions, is one of the reasons for choosing m = 1625/1650 nm like measurement wavelength. The bigger the wavelength is, the better the detection of macrobending will be. The losses in 1625/1650 nm are grater than in 1550 nm (0,4 dB/km@1625nm; 0,20 dB/km @1550nm) The OTDR must measure in 1310, 1490, 1550 y 1625/1650 nm wavelengths. To have the possibility of using 1490 nm is very important for the use of single mode zero peak water fibers (SM-ZPW; according to G.652C/D) In the MRN node will be saved the right graph/trace of the optical fiber during the start up period, in order to be used as reference trace. Subsequent traces that can have a failure will differ from the original one. Consequently, it will be produced: alarm generation distance calculation to the event event location on GIS system The measurement will run continuously, doing a permanent comparison between the original trace and new traces. Both traces will be overlapped showing the differences as well as doing a comparative analysis. See Figure BB The traces will be selected by the monitoring system, as follow: original trace (reference trace) trace with failure (alarm trace) overlapped traces (showing differences) MONITORING WAVELENGHTS It is important that the wavelength to be used for the monitoring system can not interfere with the useful wavelengths that are used for information transmission (SDH communication systems). This condition is advisable in spite of the installation of filters in order to block the monitoring wavelength (m) to the communication equipment. Then, it is advisable to follow with ITU-T recommendations like it would exist interference with useful wavelengths, in spite of the decision will be to use dark fibers for monitoring purposes. . According to ITU-T L.40 Table II.3 the monitoring system must consider to use m = 1650/1625 nm as monitoring wavelength, for both: a) supervision function detection of greater fiber attenuation (measurement by OTDR) detection of reduction of optical power (optical power metering) 8 Optical cables management system for 500kV networks-v.3 D2 01- A07

 b) tests

detection of humidity into the cable (measurement by OTDR and sensors) measurement of distance to the failure (event) (measurement by OTDR) measurement of exceeded strain (measurement by OTDR-B and sensors) measurement of water (measurement by OTDR and sensors)

ITU-T L.41 Table 1 suggests the monitoring wavelength for equivalent conditions that are used by Transener (see Case # 3)

This suggested wavelength is applicable for monitoring optical cables that include either standard single mode (SM) fibres, or dispersion shifted (SM-DS) fibres. Additionally, the ITU-T L.41 suggests that the gap between monitoring wavelength (m) and the useful wavelength (j ), will be 100 nm. This criterion gives validity to the election of m: 1650/1625 nm Moreover, it is necessary to take into account the effect of greater losses for long link distances that are mentioned in before paragraphs. In spite of using dark fibres monitoring, it is advisable to follow with the recommendations like it could exist interferences between monitoring fibres and useful fibres CONCLUSION It is a solution to be implemented as a pending issue in order to get a complete and integrated network management system for the whole communication system that nowadays assists the 500kV networks. The cost reduction in the current preventive maintenance tasks, the checking process during installation tasks of new optical cables, the auditing the repair tasks of subcontractors, etc, as well as the increase of the Total Annual Availability (Ai) of the whole optical cables network, will have completely justified the decision for implementing the remote monitoring system of optical cables BIBLIOGRAPHY *Guide to fiber optic measurement, Wavetek Saint-Ethiene *Fundamentals cable engineering system planning, Siemens *Fiber optic communication systems, Govind Agrawal *ITU-T recommendations L.40, L.41

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FIGURE BB

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FIGURE DD

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FIGURE EE

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