Multi-Impedance change localization of the on-voltage power cable using wavelet transform based time-frequency domain reflectometry

In this paper, we propose a multi-impedance changes localization method of on-voltage underground power cable using the wavelet transform based time-frequency domain reflectometry (WTFDR). To localize the impedance change in on-voltage power cable, the TFDR is the most suitable among reflectometries because the inductive coupler is used to inject the reference signal to the live cable. At this time, the actual on-voltage power cable has multi-impedance changes such as the automatic section switches and the auto load transfer switches. However, when the multi-impedance changes are generated in the close range, the conventional TFDR has the cross term interference problem because of the nonlinear characteristics of the Wigner-Ville distribution. To solve the problem, the wavelet transform (WT) is used because it has the linearity. That is, using WTFDR, the cross term interference is not generated in multi-impedance changes due to the linearity of the WT. To confirm the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method, the actual experiments are carried out for the on-voltage underground power cable.