Test device and a method for determining communication characteristics of a metal cable

#The present disclosure relates to determining characteristics of a metal cable suitable for use in a communication system.

#The increasing demand for quantity and speed of data constantly puts higher requirements on all available media for accommodating the increasing demand. Noticeably, data transmission at short distances is now a topic of great interest. In order to ensure the operation according to current technical standards and regulations, monitoring and diagnostics of the deployed network are necessary. Of course, the techniques applied should be reliable and relatively inexpensive.

#Existing communication networks comprise e.g. copper cables, both newer and older copper cables. Depending on the quality of the cables, they are more or less capable of supporting both high speed data transmission and a large amount of concurrent data transmission.

#Embodiments will now be described in more detail in relation to the accompanying drawings, in which:

#FIG. 1a is a flowchart of a method performed by the test device for determining characteristics of a metal cable suitable for use in a communication system according to an exemplifying embodiment.

#FIG. 1b is a flowchart of a method performed by the test device for determining characteristics of a metal cable suitable for use in a communication system according to yet an exemplifying embodiment.

#Briefly described, a test device and a method performed by the test device for determining characteristics of a metal cable suitable for use in a communication system are provided. By transmitting a test signal on the metal cable, a reflected signal is received. The reflected signal may then be analysed and examined in order to determine characteristics of the metal cable.

#Exemplifying embodiments of such a method will now be described with reference to FIG. 1a.

#FIG. 1a illustrates the method comprising transmitting 110 a wideband test signal on the cable; receiving 120 a reflected signal as a result of the test signal; and determining 130 an interval of the reflected signal to be analysed, the interval corresponding to a part of the cable length. The method further comprises approximating 140 the reflected signal within the interval by a regression model; and determining 150 characteristics of the cable based on the regression model.