Data acquisition and storage system for telecommunication equipment to facilitate alignment and realignment of the telecommunications equipment

DETAILED DESCRIPTION It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and a method for automating in the field the alignment and realignment of telecommunications equipment.
It is another object of the invention to provide an apparatus and a method for tuning of amplifiers in a telecommunications system, such as a cable communication system, in order to significantly reduce the costs of maintenance of the system.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an apparatus and a method establishing prealignment characteristics of amplifiers in a telecommunications system depending on the location of the amplifiers in the system.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide an apparatus and method of making practical universal standard alignment characterization of amplifying devices used to construct a telecommunication system to simplify the alignment task.
According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, a data acquisition and transceiver module is used to acquire data from diagnostic equipment, such as a portable sampling spectrum analyzer.
This data is then transmitted to a slave transceiver and storage module where it is stored in memory.
The slave transceiver and storage module may be housed in the telecommunications electronic equipment and serves as an archival resource for how the equipment is to be set up and maintained.
Alternatively, the storage module may be part of a centrally located file server accessed via modem or cellular telephone.
In a specific implementation of the invention, the slave transceiver and storage module is housed in the amplifier of a cable communications system, such as a CATV system.
Amplitude versus frequency data unique to a particular amplifier located in the system is downloaded from the data acquisition and transceiver module to the slave transceiver and storage module and stored.
The stored sweep data is then available to facilitate periodic amplifier adjustments or for setting up a replacement amplifier should the original amplifier fail