Improvement methods for cable diagnosis by reflectometry
The use of electric cables in electrical systems has been significantly increasing over the last decades. However, the reliability of these systems is partially based on the reliability of electrical networks. Current practices show that a significant number of failures and malfunctions of these systems come from faults in wired links and not from electrical devices. Therefore, the knowledge of the state of wire networks and particularly the detection of their faults is important. Several methods have been developed to test the status of cables. Among them, reflectometry methods are widely used and easily embeddable. Generally, these methods are appropriate to detect and locate hard faults but soft faults are virtually transparent to them because this kind of fault has very low electrical consequences. Improvements in measurement and treatment are necessary to overcome the limitations of these methods. In this respect, three new methods for wire diagnosis have been studied and developed to improve and ease the detection and location of soft wire faults. Each of these methods circumvents one or more of the barriers encountered during this research’s duration. First barrier, the phenomenon of signal dispersion in cables makes the detection of faults and of cable aging difficult or imprecise. Another barrier, the detection of soft faults, represents currently a major issue of wire diagnosis because the amplitude of soft faults signatures is very small and sometimes noisy or masked by the proximity of higher pulses. The three methods can briefly described as follows : – The first method, called "adaptive correlation", provides a new algorithm to compensate signal’s dispersion. It improves fulat’s location and the detection of singularities on cables regardless their lengths. – The second method, called TRR (Time Reversal Reflectometry), is based on the principle of reflectometry and time reversal. It allows the characterization of aging of electrical cables. – The third method, called RART (Reflectrometry combined with a time reversal process), is also based on the principle of reflectometry and time reversal. It improves the detection of electrical faults related to degradation of insulation. This research illustrates the efficiency and applicability of the proposed methods. It also demonstrates the potential of the proposed methods to improve safety in operation of electrical systems whether in transport, construction, or even communication networks.