Selecting and monitoring signal lines with spurious transients in broadband network

Abstract

The invention is a broadband network monitoring system and method. The system has one or more RF carrier generators that generate one or more generator signals, called a reference signal, each of the generator signals having a generator signal frequency. One or more RF transient detectors sense a line signal on one or more broadband lines in the broadband network. Each line signal has one or more test signals applied by a remote RF carrier generator. Each test signal has a frequency equal to one of the reference signals. Each RF transient detector senses and compares the test signal and the reference signal in various ways to produce a transient indicator when the test signal and reference/generator signal are not the same. The transient indicator indicates that there may be a perturbation or some other problem in the respective broadband line. A controller is connected to each of the RF transient detectors and controls an RF switch and an analyzer. The RF switch has two or more inputs connected to each respective RF detector and one output connected to the analyzer. When the controller receives a transient indicator, it controls the switch to connect the broadband line producing the transient indicator to the analyzer and, in a preferred embodiment, starts the analyzer. In this way, all of the broadband lines can be monitored and analyzed for perturbations using a single analyzer.