Using ingress for leakage determination in cable networks

A method for locating and determining an intensity of a signal egress leakage of a fault, without detecting or measuring the signal egress leakage, within a hybrid coaxial-fiber cable distribution network with an upstream frequency band encompassing an aeronautical band spanning over a range between 120 MHz and 140 MHz, the cable distribution network comprising a head station for transmitting content to subscribers at downstream frequencies within a network bandwidth, the method comprising:

• transmitting from a vehicle, geo-location information indicating a geographical position of the vehicle in a radio signal having a carrier frequency within the aeronautical band, emitted at a transmitter power in a decibel scale EP;
• receiving the radio signal at the head station of the cable distribution network,
• measuring, at the head station, a sum (VL+VP) of a return signal level at leakage point in dBmV (VL) and a voltage induced at leakage point L in dBmV (VP) both converted into a decibel scale;
• extracting geo-location information from said radio signal to determine the location of the signal ingress point within the cable distribution network;
• and
• determining the intensity of a signal egress leakage EL of the fault by calculating EL=VP+VL−EP+116.5 in decibel scale.