Training
Fiber, teleprotection and OT
Session 2 puts the protection engineer and the communications engineer in the same room. That is the point of it: the two disciplines fail at each other’s boundary, and neither sees it alone.
The sessions
Optical budget in practice
Who it is for: Installation designer, operations engineer.
After the session you will be able to:
- Calculate a budget from distance, splices and connector pairs
- Separate system budget from system margin and know what the margin is set aside for
- Judge whether a quoted "typical distance" is fit for engineering
- Read an OTDR record well enough to ask the right question
Content and exercise: Exercise: make 21-203’s singlemode side (30 dB) work over a real 95 km span with 48 splices and six connector pairs. Participants should arrive at the conclusion that it does not, and be able to say why.
The teleprotection chain from relay to relay
Who it is for: Protection engineer and communications engineer — both in the same room, that is the point.
After the session you will be able to:
- Describe the whole chain from relay to relay and place the delay budget on it
- Explain why channel asymmetry produces a phase error rather than a visible fault
- Say where the clock master sits and what happens when it disappears
- Formulate the questions the protection engineer and the communications engineer have to answer together
Content and exercise: Exercise: an operational case where the transport network protection-switched one direction and the differential protection alarmed. Participants have to find the connection without being given it.
Fault finding: the optics, the clock or the connector?
Who it is for: Operations staff, fault response.
After the session you will be able to:
- Separate a marginal optical budget from a clock problem from a dirty connector
- Use the diagnostic rule: a regular interval means timing, an irregular one means optics
- Choose the measurement before the action
- Explain why a bit error can mean too much light as well as too little
Content and exercise: Exercise: four fault descriptions, none with an obvious cause. Participants have to choose the measurement before the action.
The environment around the equipment: temperature, EMC and where things may sit
Who it is for: Designer, buyer.
After the session you will be able to:
- Read operating temperature rather than storage temperature from a datasheet
- Place equipment in the right environment from documented figures
- Say which EMC framework a product is tested against, and why both are not stated
- Formulate environmental requirements that a datasheet can actually answer
Content and exercise: Exercise: place nine products from the catalogue in three environments (relay cabinet, cross-connect room, outdoor cabinet). The answers are in the datasheets — participants only have to read them.
Before the session
Background reading and equipment
Training
Four tracks, seventeen sessions, built from real installations.
Next step
A track that is not here?
These four grew out of the questions we are asked most. If your question is a different one, it is probably worth a session of its own — tell us what it is.